


Finders, Keepers

by etrix



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Challenge Response, Character Study, Episode Related, Episode: s01e21 Salvation, Gen, POV Female Character, POV Outsider, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-11
Updated: 2011-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:29:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etrix/pseuds/etrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three days after the hot guys disappeared from her family’s motel, Mandy finally cleans out their room. There are charts on the weather and quotes about demon behavior, but there’s also a bag filled with Mary Campbell’s diaries from the late 1960’s. Mandy stores everything behind the counter half-hoping one of the sexy McGillicuddy males will come back for them. In the meantime, there’s nothing stopping her from reading them is there? </p><p>Written for the 2011 spn_reversebang challenge. Art by viviantanner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Finders

 

  


"Housekeeping!"

Mandy banged on the door but got no response. Not that she really expected one since both the mini-monster truck and the old muscle car were gone. Three days gone actually, and the McGillicuddys' pre-paid week had ended more than a day ago.

Too bad, she thought, because she wouldn't have minded catching any of those guys in just a towel, even the older one.

Or maybe there'd be a dead body! That would certainly spice up Mandy's day.

They'd never had that happen in their motel, but Cindy, whose family ran the truck rest-stop north of the highway, had found a guy who'd had a heart attack once. But if one of the McGillicuddys had died, why hadn't one of the other two called the ambulance or something? They could've kept up their father-son cover story, no problem.

Or, she thought, maybe _they'd_ killed someone.

Her heart rate bumped up a notch as she wondered if, like Clooney and Tarantino in _From Dusk Till Dawn_ , the McGillicuddys were serial killers on the run. There could be a cut-up body in the room, and that would explain why they'd left in such a hurry.

Mandy snorted as her common sense kicked in. It wasn't impossible, but there was nothing on the radio about anybody being missing, and it would've been plastered all over (and gossiped about). Big news in Salvation was the fund-raiser to buy a new bus for the high school or the biggest fish caught in West Okiboji this year. Hell, the Holts' house fire still made page 2 of the local paper. ( _The Echo_ was only eight pages in total so that wasn't as impressive as it might have been.)

Besides, she'd been there when her mom had checked them in and none of the McGillicuddys had had the vibe that said 'screws-seriously-loose'.

Dangerous? Hell yes, (and sexy as hell, too!) but not serial killers.

Mom wouldn't have rented to them if she'd thought they were seriously nuts. The motel wasn't just a business, it was their home, and Mom never forgot that. She'd even got money from their dad to install a straight-to-the-cops panic button under the front desk. Not that it had been hard to get that money. Like Mom always said, he'd been a lot of things ("lying, womanizing, bastard" was Mom's favorite) but he'd never been tightfisted.

She and Claire were supposed to go visit him at the end of the month, or rather _she_ was. Claire was too busy getting ready for college. It was just going to be Mandy this year, which meant it was going to be freaking _awful_! Claire was the only thing she and her father had in common. Without her sister as the center, she and Dad wouldn't be able to find more than a dozen things to say to each other, including "pass the salt" and "boy, it's hot out".

Two weeks of socially awkward hell—something to look forward to.

She sighed in resignation and gave the thin wood another sharp rap before hauling out the master key and opening up the door into the dark room. She removed the 'Do Not Disturb' sign as she sniffed cautiously for signs of anything rotting.

Nothing.

Just stale air and the fading scent of a bunch of healthy guys in a small space. (It was all Leila's fault that she knew what the guys' locker room smelled like and she never wanted to go into another one.) Another sniff, because—mmm—one of them had worn a spicy aftershave and not that stinky Axe stuff either, something lighter. It was actually kind of nice.

Leaving the door open (to give the place light and fresh air), she pulled on the gloves (just in case). The room wasn't _filthy_ (certainly no dead bodies anywhere), just untidy.

There were empty pizza boxes (Luigi's. Ugh. They made the worst pizza in town!) lying neatly beside the kitchen garbage that were easy to remove. There were empty beer cans stacked up on the table that she put in a bag so they could be returned for the deposit, but nothing horrific, nothing that couldn't be explained by the three of them leaving in a hurry. The grossest things were the used Kleenexes on the end tables, but they'd been there long enough to be completely dry. She stepped closer to sweep them into the garbage can and noticed the stuff pinned to the wall.

Damn it! Pin holes were the worst because they were hardly worth the effort it took to fill them.

Then she saw what the pins were holding up.

What the…?

She squinted in confusion. Who needed old weather reports?

She looked at the next section: clippings from the World Weekly News on cattle mutilations in the area.

She snickered until she saw the name of the ranch. The articles were about old man Halford's cattle. He'd lost four head last month and talk was it had been pretty gruesome. Everyone thought Shawn Curbin and his gang of sicko ass-wipes had done it but the cops hadn't been able to prove anything. Nothing had happened since and the talk had finally died down. As far as Mandy knew, Mr. Halford hadn't told anyone in town about the article, and you'd think he would've been milking his celebrity down at the Legion as soon as the reporter called.

Of course, it _was_ the World Weekly News, which was mostly used to line bird cages, so maybe Mr. Halford just hadn't wanted to be linked with a paper that ran articles about possessed toasters and alien Elvis babies? Still, his picture in a national paper… Kinda cool.

As Mandy pulled the pins out and gathered up the clippings, she glanced through them. There were more clippings about the weather and other strange happenings, and there were hand-written notes, strange symbols (possibly Wiccan but maybe Satanic; Mandy wasn't an expert). Right next to those were a couple quotes from the Bible and some Latin-looking words, and a map with colored pins in it. (More pinholes! Inconsiderate asses.) The pins were all connected by colored yarns, like they were trying to figure out a pattern.

Mandy realized that the McGillicuddys were like Fox Mulder, trying to find proof that aliens existed or something.

Cool!

Though it was kind of sad that guys so good looking were all insane.

She piled all the papers on the table with the vague thought that she'd read through them later; see how the minds of alien hunters worked (since manning the desk during the day gave her long periods of nothing-else-to-do, and there was only so much Minesweeper she could play). She looked at the pinholes more closely. Maybe she could use the spearmint gel toothpaste to fill them. It dried to almost the same pukey green as the wallpaper.

Happy with her plan, Mandy hummed along to her MP3 player as she filled and wiped and hauled and washed and vacuumed. She didn't actually mind the work. Her sister, Claire, would much rather do the bookkeeping and form-filling. She wanted to be an accountant or maybe a tax lawyer, but that was because her sister was weird… and actually rather brilliant.

She knew she wasn't as smart as Claire and she was okay with that. There was less pressure on her to do something with her mediocre brains, both from her parents and from inside herself. Claire loathed the idea of being limited in her life, and the idea of staying in Salvation filled her sister with dread. Not Mandy. In fact, the idea of staying here at the motel and living her whole life in Salvation was kind of reassuring. So she cleaned and hummed and thought that one day, it would be nice to put in cabinets with a honey-wood finish and get rid of the butt-ugly gold/cream laminate that had come with the place.

Mandy made her second big discovery after stripping the beds. Underneath one of them was a worn leather satchel (they called it a 'man bag', but really it was just a plain, heavy purse). It must've gotten pushed there sometime during the McGillicuddys' stay and none of them noticed it was missing. Maybe they hadn't realized the beds were on regular open frames and not the solid ones a lot of motels and hotels used for just this reason (another thing to put on the 'nice to have' column.)

Didn't matter why really, it was here and the McGillicuddys weren't. They'd have to hold it for 30 days in case any of them came back to claim it.

Not that many guests ever came back for their stuff but it could happen.

Maybe she'd be working the desk, early afternoon or late evening would be best because those were the quietest times, and the tall one with the shaggy hair and dimples would come in. That would be nice. Although the older one, the father, had a great voice: a low, sexy growl that would sound good reading a dictionary. Claire had liked the green-eyed one, and sure he was hot, but Mandy figured he was a bit of a player, and she'd never really liked the idea of being one of a crowd. Still, he'd had nice hands… and a nice smile.

Yeah, who was she kidding? She'd spend time with him if he asked.

Really, though, it wasn't actually likely that any of them would be coming back for it after how many days. She could stuff the papers in the 'man bag' so Mom wouldn't throw them out and Mandy would be able to read them when it was slow.

The bag was surprisingly heavy as she carried it over to the table. It actually went "thunk" when she dropped it.

Huh.

She opened the bag to look in and saw the books. Not _book_ books, but coil-bound notebooks with clasps, like a Day-Timer but thicker.

These were probably where the McGillicuddys kept all their alien research, Mandy thought with excitement. They'd be filled with notes and drawings and map coordinates, just like Indy in _The Last Crusade_. Except there were a couple so obviously girly it was surprising three alpha-male-types had bought them. Big-ass flowers in psychedelic colors hardly matched the testosterone-overload levels of the McGillicuddys. Unless there was a meaning to the covers: red for alien abduction stories and flowers for crop circles?

Then Mandy thought, maybe there'd be a name or a phone number or something in one of them, some way for her to call and let them know they'd left a bag behind.

Opening them up and taking a look wouldn't be snooping, she told herself, it would just be good customer service. The actions of a concerned and caring tourist industry worker…

She could totally do that.

There was an extra jig in her step as she packed up the vacuum. It would be a lot more interesting than watching _CSI: Miami,_ that was for damn sure.

* * *

  
They were diaries, not research journals; six volumes of the personal, intimate thoughts of one Mary Campbell from the late 1960s and early 1970s.

There was no address or phone number in any of them. Aside from Mary's name and the dates written inside the covers, there was no information about the owner. Mandy didn't think that any of the McGillicuddys had stolen them—why would they?—which meant that one of them (probably the older one given the dates) had kept them out of sentiment, and _that_ made it strange that he hadn't come back or called about them. He'd cared enough to haul them around with him, but not enough to keep track of their whereabouts?

Still, his negligence made them fair game, right?

It took two more days for Mandy to have enough quiet time to start reading.

Owning a motel was cool and all, but it was a lot of work for the three of them. Claire was running the sheets through the wash. Mom was supervising Jed as he fixed the plumbing in 7A, (nice enough guy, but light-fingered and a little lazy) so Mandy had the desk, which was nice and quiet. The corporate rep dude had already checked out, a couple of state researchers had checked in, and there were the Holts staying in 10B while they dealt with their insurance agent.

Their house had burnt down a week ago and the insurance company was arguing the payout. The official cause was faulty wiring, but Leila's dad (who was a volunteer firefighter) said that the fire had started on the ceiling, not inside the walls, which is where it would have started if it had been the wiring. Not that any of the firefighters were telling the insurance company that. After all (the discussions went), Charlie Holt was one of them, the Holts needed the money to rebuild, little Rosie was only six months old, and insurance companies were "parasites" and/or "evil incarnate" (depending on who was speaking) and should be forced to pay in full no matter what.

Besides, there'd been no known accelerant used, according to Leila's dad. The whole room had just caught fire and taken the house with it. It was one of the most interesting things to have happened in Salvation since they found crop circles out beyond Milford.

Thinking of crop circles reminded Mandy of the notes she'd found pinned up in the McGillicuddys' room, which reminded her of the diaries, and since mid-afternoon was prime travelling time for tourists and salesmen, it would be slow enough at the desk for her to get a good start on them. The earliest volume was from 1969, so that was the one she pulled out first. It was worn but still bright with the big flowers in hallucinogenic colors that could only be from the late '60s.

1969.

Nixon had taken over as president and America had started bombing Cambodia (she looked it up). Led Zeppelin recorded their first studio album and Elvis did his comeback thing. Apollo 11 landed on the moon. …or not, if that's what you wanted to believe. _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_ was released (Paul Newman—yum!) and there were riots over race and poverty and peace. Old people complained that young people lacked discipline, and young people complained that old people lacked vision.

Mandy smirked at how little the world had changed.

Then she carefully opened the book and started to read.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_Okay, so maybe I was wrong and Lawrence isn't as bad as I thought. It'll never be Sacramento but it's not the back of beyond either. There are three colleges here. Three! I've already looked into their scholarship programs and I think, if I work hard through high school, I'll be able to get scholarships from Kansas U. I could try for the Classics program. I like books and I already know Latin, so that should help._

_Dad says he moved out here to be closer to Mom's family but I know it was because he found the brochures from Berkeley and thought I was turning into some kind of hippie peacenik. He thinks that by moving to the Midwest, I'll go back to being the same person I was three years ago. People here are more conservative, all right, but that's not what this is about anyway._

_It's about wanting something else, something better than hunting and killing all the time! I want a home and a family that loves me because of who I am and not because I've memorized four different exorcisms and can cast consecrated iron rounds in my sleep–_

…

Whoa! Mary's family sounded nuts: talking about hunting, killing, and exorcisms! And what the hell's a "consecrated round"?

Maybe they were a cult, like Charles Manson. There'd been lots of violent cults in the sixties… right? Aryan Nations and all those guys.

If Mary turned out to be a racist, skin-head asshole then Mandy wasn't going to read her diaries! Hating someone for something like skin color—or sexual orientation—was just stupid and hurtful, and Mandy wasn't going to have anything to do with a person like that. Not after what Claire had gone through.

She huffed out a calming breath, and picked up reading from where she'd stopped.

…

_–I start high school next week. I'm kind of nervous. What if I don't make any friends?_

…

The bell over the door rang and a couple girls in their early twenties walked in. Mandy placed a brochure for the nearby state park into the diary to hold her place and got them registered. Lindsey Hopps and Kelly Parker were best friends, they told Mandy. They were both going to Chicago to attend Northwestern, so they'd decided to make a vacation of the trip.

It was funny, but they were doing what Mary had dreamed of nearly forty years ago—creating a life of their own away from everything they'd known. It was what Claire would be doing in just a couple months, hoping that the big city would give her something she'd never found here.

Mandy couldn't really see the attraction. Well, she _could,_ but not really. Sure those places had art galleries and museums, and all that cultural stuff, but they also had way too many people. Mom and Dad had lived on the same block, in the same building, for over a decade, and Mom said she hadn't known the names of most of her neighbors. It was one of the reasons she'd moved them here after the divorce: so they could get to know the people around them, be part of a community, live at a slower pace.

Apparently, it had been something she and Dad had talked about before they got married, but when it came down to it, Dad turned out to be a big city boy all the way through. He didn't like not being able to put his arm out the window and touch the house next door. He wanted to be able to find a Starbuck's on every second corner, and to not have to spend five minutes saying "hello" to everybody he saw.

Mandy liked talking to people, getting to know them. That's why she pointed the two girls towards Claudio's ( _waaay_ better pizza than Luigi's).

* * *

  
_Dear Diary,_

_First day of school and it was mostly a cakewalk. There are fewer than a thousand students at Lawrence High. Most of them went to one or other of the two junior highs so they've already known each other for years. I got singled out, of course, being the new girl. When they discovered that I was from California, everyone wanted to know what Beverly Hills was like. Had I been in any movies? Did I surf?_

_The questions were silly and it was hard to convince them that I'd never been to Los Angeles, and that I didn't know Kurt Russell, without laughing in their faces._

…

Kurt Russell had been around in 1969? Damn! The man looked pretty good for an old guy.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_Amy, Julie, and Natalie (who just might be turning into friends) dragged me out to watch the football tryouts. They all plan to be cheerleaders but only because they get to meet the players that way. It wasn't bad, I suppose, although my mom's comment that organized sports is just ritualized war kept playing in my mind._

_Turns out there are only a couple of the players that they're interested in: Brad Vogel, the quarterback, and Johnny Winchester, who's a wide receiver. I had to ask them what that was (he catches the ball and runs with it) and the girls were shocked that I didn't know the proper terms. I'd be embarrassed but I've never enjoyed football. (Baseball, now there's a game!)_

_Then they came over and tried to act all super-cool: as if girls should want them just because they play football. They tried to sound like James Bond or Steve McQueen but they're just skinny 14-year-olds like me._

_Still, their whole attitude was sleazy and kind of yucky._

_Even if Dad would let me, I don't think I'll be trying out for the cheerleading squad._

…

Mandy couldn't help but snicker at Mary's description of the football team and the way the girls had drooled over them. It hadn't changed much because lots of her female classmates did the same thing. And there was the girlfriend hierarchy to make it another step back in time. The quarterback's girlfriend ranked higher than the nose guard's girlfriend who was higher than the running backs'… blahblahblah. She and Claire had laughed about that a time or two.

And speak of the devil…

"Meatloaf for supper," Claire said, holding out a plate with a slice of loaf, piles of mashed potatoes and vegetables, and gravy steaming gently over all of it.

Mandy put aside the volume and took the nearly overflowing plate, inhaling the rich aroma with deep-seated pleasure.

"What you reading?" her sister asked.

She shrugged. "A diary that got left behind by the McGillicuddys."

"Oh, gross!" Claire scrunched up her face. "You shouldn't be reading that. It's private."

"It's okay. It's, like, really old," Mandy explained hastily. "And it wasn't written by any of them. It was written by this chick who wanted to move away from home, do something completely different. Kind of like you." She smiled to take the sting out of the comment. Just because she didn't want to leave Salvation didn't mean she didn't understand why her sister thought life would be better elsewhere.

"I don't know how you can want to stay here," Claire commented, flipping through the fragile diary and having to stop and tuck the loose pages back in.

Mandy entered into the old argument willingly. After all, Claire had brought her mashed potatoes and gravy. "I don't know why you feel you need to leave."

"Oh come on! Everybody knows everybody else's business all the time. There's always somebody watching, gossiping," Claire shuddered and closed the book. "You can't ever be completely private in Salvation."

"That's only a problem if you've got something to hide," Mandy pointed out. She looked up at the ceiling as if searching her memories. "Yeah, nope. Hiding nothing, so no worries."

Claire snorted. "You couldn't keep a secret if were implanted by aliens."

"Hey!" she protested, kind of hurt. "I can keep a secret." Mandy swallowed the suddenly heavy potatoes. They stuck all the way down.

Claire looked stricken. She bumped Mandy's shoulder. "I mean about yourself. You just put yourself out there for people to take or leave. It's… It's very brave."

Mandy wasn't brave. She didn't say that though. Instead she tried to reassure her sister, one more time. "Mom would understand."

"Maybe _Mom_ would, but a lot of people around here wouldn't." It was what Claire always said—didn't help that it had turned out to be true.

"Plus," Claire continued. "You'd get some of the fallout, just from being my sister. I won't do that to you, not when you still have two years of school left." She wrapped her arm around Mandy's shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze. "Now finish up your supper then you can take your plate in. I'll work the counter tonight."

It was a generous offer since Claire hated being bored and midweek couldn't be anything else.

Mandy lifted one of the diaries. "Did you want to read one?" she asked even though she had a good idea what her sister's answer would be. "It's, like, history, right?"

Claire shook her head. "I'm going to fill out scholarships applications. It would be kind of nice to eat while I'm in Boston."

So, when Mandy went through the back to their part of the motel, she took the diaries with her.

* * *

  
_Dear Diary,_

_I got fifteen bull's-eyes out of eighteen rounds using the silver bullets. Mom was proud and I think Dad was too, a little. Of course, all he said was that we'd keep working until I managed eighteen out of eighteen._

_I also got A's in three of my school subjects (English, History, and Home Ec) but do they mention that? Nope. Not a word. Most parents would be proud to have their child on the honor roll but mine? If it can't be used to kill or banish something, they don't really care._

_Their priorities are skewed._

…

Mandy re-read that entry a couple times trying to figure out what "silver bullets" was code for, or what it could've been a code for back in 1969, but she kept coming up blank. Aside from Coors beer, (and were they even around back then?) the only thing Mandy could think of was drugs, and Mary had already made her opinion of narcotics very, very clear. (Mary plus an inebriated pass after the pep rally equaled one broken nose! BAMF!)

However, Mary's diary was filled with stuff like that—making silver bullets, learning the rituals to make "holy water" and "blessed blades", plus exorcisms and weapons training. It was weird.

It was also weird that Mandy was halfway through the first volume and she still hadn't figured out what Mary's parents did for a living, or rather her dad, because women didn't usually work outside the home in the '60s. It almost sounded like he was a big game hunter but that was stupid. How could her dad do that from Lawrence, _Kansas?_ It hardly qualified as wild or mountainous.

With a sigh, Mandy set her confusion aside once again, and moved to the next entry.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_Mr. Kieran made Johnny Winchester and me partners for the final assignment. It is so unfair! Winchester doesn't care about school. He just sits in the back reading auto manuals or sleeping. I'll end up doing all the work but we'll get the same mark. I'm tempted to do badly, except I can't. It's not "the Campbell Way" after all._

_"If you have to do something, you do it to the best of your ability: no holding back," Mom's always saying and it is one thing we all agree on._

_Besides, I don't want to fail, damn it!_

_I refuse to fail._

…

_Dear Diary,_

_It's as bad as I feared. Winchester hasn't researched anything I asked him to. I don't think he's even read the textbook. He says he's done the map, but he won't let me see it, so I doubt it's actually done._

_If he makes my mark drop, I really will hit him no matter what Dad might say. I'm going to GET that scholarship and DO something with my life. Something that's not hunting._

…

She sounded like Claire. Wanting so much more than what small-town middle-America had to offer. Poor Mary.

Poor Claire.

* * *

  
_Dear Diary,_

_I hate to say this, but Winchester's map was fantastic. It was detailed, colorful, and interesting. He caught everything we'd discussed._

_On the other hand, he put his hand on my butt and squeezed. I wanted to break his fingers. I couldn't, of course because it was bad enough when I "accidentally" broke that jerk's nose at the pep rally, but twice before Christmas? It would be a bad scene. A) it would be an unforgivable thing to do to the school's best running back-catcher person, and B) there would be questions about where I'd learned how to do it—questions that my family can't afford to have asked._

…

Cult, Mandy thought again, but not any of the ones she'd looked up.

...

_–He said it's what the football team does to congratulate each other. I removed his hand and told him next time, he should shake my hand._

_He smiled a creepy, leering smile and said, "So there IS going to be a next time? You want it, right?"_

_Chauvinist ass._

…

He was lucky Mary _hadn't_ hit him, Mandy thought. She totally should have!

The descriptions of the training old man Campbell had put his daughter through sounded intense and ruthless and completely kick-ass. It kind of made Mandy want to take up Tae Kwon Do or Kung Fu. Not that anybody had ever tried to grab her ass, but it would be nice to know how to break their fingers if anybody did.

She yawned hard enough to make her head hurt. A glance at the clock showed that it was after 1 a.m. No wonder she was tired. She'd been up since six and she'd never exactly been a night owl. She marked her place and carefully put a big elastic around the fragile book to hold the pages together.

Mary Campbell would have to wait for another day.

* * *

  
_Dear Diary,_

_John Winchester is a horrible, contemptible person!_

_He invited me to a party being given by a friend of his. At first I thought he was being nice then he told me that "the guys" thought I was "a bit frigid". He actually said he was willing to save me from that reputation. All I had to do was I kiss him at the party and make out with him a little._

_I told him "No." I even added the thank you, to be polite. Then I said I didn't need the kind of reputation hanging around a greaser like him would give me._

_That's when he said I was a cold, prejudiced snob, who thought I was so much better than anybody else because I came from California (not true!). Then he said, "If I didn't learn how to relax, I'd never get a boyfriend."_

_I admit I lost my temper. I yelled that if I ever wanted a selfish, brainless, shallow ASS in my life I'd think of him. Then I said he should go out on the field and learn how to play with his balls by himself since I certainly wasn't going to volunteer to do it._

_We were in the cafeteria at the time so just about everyone heard us. Now Amy won't talk to me (and neither will Julie or Natalie) because she's been angling to become his girlfriend since September._

_She can have him._

…

Mandy silently cheered Mary on.

Mary might have been a straight-arrow over-achiever but she had a toughness that made her classmates seem twice as wimpy. It made her seem more like she belonged in the present day rather than back then.

Yeah, okay, Mandy knew the Women's Rights Movement had barely gotten started when Mary was in school (viva la internet!), so the other girls' attitudes were more common than not, but Mary's comments at her classmates angling to get pinned or ringed, or their squee-ing because they got to wear their boyfriends' letter jacket? Those were things that Mandy had thought (and said).

Even now, in 2006, there were girls whose greatest ambition was to marry their high-school sweetheart and live in a big house. That was okay if it honestly was what they wanted to do, but that didn't make it okay for them to make bitchy comments about the girls who didn't want to do the June Cleaver thing.

Hel- _LO_! Women have _choices_ now.

Sure, Mandy didn't want to leave Salvation, but she wasn't about to rush into marriage either. And not wanting to be wedded and bedded while still in her teens did _not_ make her—or anyone else—godless or a dyke. It just made them different.

Mandy thought of Mary, and then of Claire, and sighed.

It wasn't easy being different.

* * *

  
That night Claire was at her second job, waitressing at the Biggerson's out by the highway, and Mom was finishing up the remittances and stuff, so Mandy was once again at the desk. It was halfway busy. The college students and the salesman had left, and another family and some vacationers had checked in, all of them stopping for the night before heading out to Spirit Lake, where they were going to spend a week camping, fishing and exploring. From what Mandy had heard other people say, it was a nice area for a vacation, so she'd told the tourists what she knew and what she'd heard. They'd seemed to appreciate it.

Mandy watched them shift into their rooms with a smile. She liked helping people. It made her feel good.

In between being an unofficial travel agent, Mandy read entry after entry of Mary Campbell's freshman year at Lawrence High School. Aside from the old-fashioned slang, like 'far out' and 'queer' (but not meaning gay), her experiences could've taken place at any time in any school. The way the students hung out in their little cliques was exactly the same as in her school. Mary's diaries talked of drugs and fights, and if they were sometimes more politically based than Mandy was used to (anti-war demonstrations weren't exactly big in 2006), other things were exactly the same.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_I knew it would happen, but I didn't expect it to happen so fast. Amy knows how to hold a grudge and how to spread it around. All of her friends have stopped talking to me. They even move tables if I sit too close. They look at me while they whisper, so I'll know who they're talking about. Julie came right out and said it was because I'd tried to steal Winchester from Amy._

 I _tried to steal Winchester?_ Johnny Winchester _!_

_Where were they during that scene in the cafeteria? Because they obviously saw something I missed._

_I'm really upset right now. I came home and ran upstairs. Lawrence was supposed to be my fresh start; a place where nobody had any idea that my family was anything other than normal. I was going to have friends, people to go to the movies with or share some pizza._

_It's not going to happen now._

…

It was a few days before Mary made another entry. Winchester's best friend, the quarterback, started singing a song at her and calling her "Mary Lou", so of course all the other jocks did too. Needless to say, Mary's entry that day was full of words that were (almost) not fit for a lady.

On the plus side, after the jocks got tired of singing, a girl named Liddy Walsh came up after school and talked with her. Liddy's dad had been in the army when he met her mom, and she was half-Korean. Most people outside Asia didn't know the difference between Korean, Japanese or Indonesian. Plus Liddy had lived most her life overseas, and she'd been places that most of the kids in Lawrence had only seen in movies.

In other words, she fit in about as well as Mary did.

They were partners in their non-conformity, which could lead to a decent friendship. For Mary's sake, Mandy hoped that's what happened.

* * *

  
_Dear Diary:_

_Dad's late getting home. He hasn't called and neither has the man he was hunting with, Daniel Elkins. Elkins is a specialist. That's what Dad said when Mom asked but neither of them would tell me what he specializes in._

_I know anyway, of course. I knew the moment I saw the dead man's blood in the fridge._

_It's poison to vampires—_

…

What the…

 _Vampires?_ Is she freaking _serious?_

…

— _but not deadly. It would be enough to stun a couple, make them vulnerable enough to finish the job. Except you have to let them get in real close, too close. If Dad was taking on a nest of vampires…_

 _I'm really, really worried and I hate it!_ HATE _IT!_

_Parents shouldn't put their families through this. Not their spouses, not their kids. Nobody deserves to be left behind, wondering if they'll ever see you again._

…

Mandy had to stop reading because she couldn't process it. Mary was worried about _vampires._ Seriously?

She'd thought Mary's parents were part of a cult, but it sounded like it was something worse than that. Who taught their kids that vampires were real?

Wack jobs, that's who.

Freaky cult people who brainwashed their teenage daughters into sleeping with the 'head' of the 'family' and having eight or nine kids by the guy. The kind of people who let themselves be talked into believing that drinking the poison was a perfectly acceptable solution to life's ills (although Mary's folks seemed more the type to barricade themselves into the basement with guns and a year's supply of food and water). If that was the kind of stuff that was going to happen then Mandy didn't want to know about it.

It was one thing to read about it happening to strangers a continent away, but it was completely different when it was someone she knew closely… kind of knew. Reading Mary's diaries didn't actually mean Mandy _knew_ her, but it was close.

It took two days for Mandy to talk herself into re-opening the diary.

It wasn't like there were a lot of other things to do in Salvation, and it _was_ compelling…

* * *

  
For a while, the entries after that dealt with fairly normal things. Her dad had come home hurting but not 'turned' _._ Into a _vampire!_ (Mandy could practically hear the _Underworld_ theme as she read through those entries.) Whatever had _really_ happened, it made Mary's resolve to get out of 'the family business' even stronger than before. She had thrown herself into her studies, determined to earn a scholarship to someplace else, someplace that wasn't Kansas. It was good, because Mary really needed to get away from her folks before she drank the Kool-Aid.

Unfortunately, studious Mary made for pretty boring reading. Every once in a while there'd be a tidbit tossed into the school gossip-and-homework report. Things like cleansing rituals and protective symbols, and the best way to banish various types of spirits, and Mandy would be thrown out of the ordinary once again.

That Sunday, Mandy got the afternoon off to go see a movie with her friends. It was fun, it was, to hang with Leila and Cindy and Rob, but half Mandy's mind was on Mary—Mary's life, Mary's family, Mary's choices. It was just so _odd_ that a girl with such strength of character, who already knew that her parents' life was toxic, was so willing to buy into the idea of vampires and demons and ghosties and goblins being real. It didn't _fit_.

At the theater, her friends picked _Tokyo Drift_ over _Garfield,_ so her eyes watched Lucas Black get his ass handed to him in Japan while her mind wandered…

Yes, Mandy had always tried to keep an open mind about the legends of monsters. Even though she'd never experienced anything paranormal, it didn't mean it couldn't exist. After all, they used to think the world was flat and that was completely wrong. So it was possible (she'd always told herself) that there was more to this world than what could easily be seen.

But (and even in her head she knew she was whining), thinking _theoretically_ that those things _could_ exist was a lot different from meeting someone who actually _believed_ they _did_ exist.

Yet now she kind of knew three: First it was old man Halford and his mutilated cows. Then the McGillicuddys with their clippings and weather reports. Now Mary and her father who went out hunting _vampires_.

Was it possible they were right and Mandy was wrong?

When she got home, Mandy booted up the computer and started looking. She found just the sort of crap she'd been expecting.

There were sites devoted to first-hand accounts of paranormal encounters (ghost stories), americanmonsters and cryptomundo. Sites where the origins of monster myths were argued in terms that would make Joseph Campbell shudder. (She'd once watched a special on him with Claire.) There were rants for and against the rise of neo-paganism as a sign of humanity's increasing enlightenment. She also found links to urban fantasy authors like Tanya Huff and Chuck Shurley, because they wrote about supernatural creatures living among us. ( _T_ _hose_ she bookmarked to be checked out later.)

None of it helped her figure out if it was real.

* * *

  
_Dear Diary,_

_Something really strange happened today during the awards ceremony. I was sitting in the bleachers with the rest of the ninth-graders and for some reason, I don't know why, I looked over at Johnny Winchester and he was looking at me. Our eyes met and it felt like the world tilted, and there was a plucked guitar string running between us. All of a sudden I needed to go to him, touch him, be with him, and I was sure he felt the same._

_Then my name was called for the honor roll and I had to look away._

_It broke the connection, but it still took me a moment to realize how strange that had been. I mean, he's not Romeo, I'm certainly not Juliet, and love at first sight is usually the result of a spell._

_I ran through the Lord's Prayer and a couple of the other checks I knew. I didn't detect anything, but depending on what kind of spell it was, I wouldn't._

_I don't think._

_Anyway, to be safe I didn't look at him again, and when I came home I had a bath with blessed water with some of Mom's special herbs for added cleansing. I'm still a little spooked out._

_It's a good thing that Winchester and I only have the one class together, and that school's nearly over. That should give this… whatever this is a chance to fade._

_I really, really don't want to have to tell my Mom that someone or something is trying to curse me or cast a spell on me. Dad would barge into the school dousing everyone with holy water and spouting Latin._

_I don't have many friends as it is, but that? I might as well give up trying to be normal and finish school by correspondence._

…

Mandy would have snickered, because it sounded like Mary had gotten into her mom's 'special herbs', except that Mary sounded really spooked.

Johnny Winchester was, in many ways, Mary's nemesis—the one person instrumental in making her freshman year a misery. For her to feel that he'd somehow shook her world? No wonder she was running home to check herself out for love spells or arrows from Cupid's bow. Hell, Mandy would've done the same thing if she'd ever felt that level of physical attraction towards someone she despised.

Not that she ever _had._

Had a nemesis or felt that kind of spark. Neither of those. No sparkles. No world twirling. No heart-pounding faintness or lightness of being.

She was actually pretty glad of that. That kind of love sounded pretty darn uncomfortable. Like being dragged onto an amusement park ride she knew would make her sick, but going along anyway because everyone would think she was a wuss if she didn't.

Mandy wondered what they'd looked like—Mary and Johnny, Liddy, the Campbells and the rest of them. 1969 was a long time ago, but maybe there were pictures of Lawrence High's old graduating classes up on the web someplace. Did high schools even _have_ 40-year reunions?

She clicked the desk's computer over to the browser and started searching. Just typing in their names got way too many results (mostly from useless genealogy sites), and it turned out that Lawrence High didn't post pictures of their graduating classes (not even through Facebook, which was supposed to be invading everyone's privacy). Mandy sighed. She'd have to use that Boolean Logic stuff if she wanted to get anywhere (and she was so not telling her sister because then Claire would chant "I told you so").

She decided to use "Lawrence High" AND ("Mary Campbell" OR "John* Winchester") as her search terms. It helped a little; the number of results went down to manageable (triple digits instead of six) but they didn't have what Mandy wanted. There were articles from the paper of the time saying how Johnny Winchester had run X-number of yards or scored Y-number of points, but the only pictures of him were when he was running down the field in his uniform. Of Mary, there was no mention whatsoever.

An hour. She'd spent an hour to find high school football pictures that could've come from anywhere and anytime.

Didn't matter, she decided.

She had a picture in her head of Mary as a slim blonde, probably athletic, and pretty, like Buffy, so she downloaded a picture of Sarah Michelle Gellar. Mary's dad would be that guy from _The Shield_ ('cause he was seriously badass), and her mother would be Sigourney Weaver from _Aliens_ (becauseRipley never got old). Winchester, she decided, would be Tom Welling from the early seasons of _Smallville,_ and his buddy Brad would be the guy who played Lex Luthor—although with hair. Mandy didn't watch it anymore, but she could still appreciate the scenery.

She even printed out small pictures of the stars and tucked them carefully into the diaries. Mocking herself as she did so, but doing it just the same.

Then she went back to reading, wondering what was going to develop between the two over the summer. (And if Olivia Neutron-Bomb and John Travolta sang theme songs in her head, she was the only one who had to know.)


	2. Finders

**Keepers**

It turned out Mary didn't see Johnny over the summer because she and her family took a road trip. Not to Disneyland (if it had even existed back then) but to Vermont. And not to visit relatives or buy their cheese either.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_I wanted to get a job—a paying job! I could've stayed with Liddy and her folks, or Aunt Jill and Uncle Bob could've taken me, but would Dad let me? NO, of course not. That would mean I'd lose precious training time._

_And it's not like the hunt sounds particularly dangerous. They probably won't even need me._

_I told him, I told both of them, that I'm old enough to stay by myself. I'm responsible enough to be trusted. I'm fifteen years old, I said, so they should respect my wishes._

_Nothing._

_Just hugs and disappointed looks from Mom. Lectures and laying down the law from Dad._

_It's so unfair._

…

_Dear Diary,_

_Dad let me drive the car!_

_I think it's his way of trying to make me happy that he dragged me across the continent but it was still fun (and scary! My heart was thumping and my hands were shaking). This year is my sixteenth birthday, so maybe… maybe… _

_Maybe he's going to get me a car!_

…

Mandy snorted. If Mary's dad was so hot on controlling her behavior, it wasn't likely he'd get her a car. That would just encourage freedom and independent action, and then she'd want to, you know, _vote_ or something.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_We finally reached Saratoga Springs after two flat tires and a broken timing chain. I told Dad it was a bad sign that we were having so many problems getting to Vermont. He frowned, said it was an old car, and that was the end of that discussion._

_We're meeting up with a local hunter called Rufus Turner. He's just new in the business, Dad said, but Uncle Bob vouched for him. It sounds like he's kind of unsure of what he's facing. Mom seems sure it's a pack of Cooginators–_

…

_Cooginators?_ Oh come on! Mandy had to look that one up, like, immediately.

Sure enough, cooginators were established lore in central Vermont. Described as looking like raccoons but with elongated snouts like a small alligator, they raided garbage cans for food. Like raccoons, they sounded more like pests than evil supernatural killers.

That was… if they were even _real_ , Mandy hastily edited herself, which they probably weren't.

…

_–Usually they stick to garbage cans but every so often, maybe because of the weather or the pack has gotten too large, they branch out into eating pets. This time they took a seven-month-old baby, left briefly unattended in a play-pen in the family's backyard. The poor family–_

…

A nice theory to fit the delusion, Mandy thought. It was stupid and unbelievable, except that Mary obviously _did_ believe it was possible (and people still did, according to the websites).

Then Mandy asked herself why she couldn't believe in cooginators (what a stupid name!) living wild in Vermont, but she would allow that sasquatches might hang out in the Pacific Northwest. If Mandy believed one was possible then surely she should believe the other was too? Actually, on the face of it, small scavengers were _more_ likely to have survived mostly undetected than were large, hairy bipeds because small creatures were easier to hide.

But if Mary was right about furry, half-mammal, half-reptile critters in the Adirondacks, then was she right about vampires?

Mandy's breath caught; a shiver chased down her spine and her skin. When the bell over the office door jingled she nearly had a heart attack.

"Jesus Christ!" she shouted. The diary skittered off the counter and onto the floor, landing with some pages folded over. She quickly bent down to retrieve it before it got damaged. When she straightened, it was to see a very serious (and seriously good-looking) black man staring at her.

"Sorry. You scared me."

The guy's lips quirked up. "I have that effect on people."

A snort sounded from behind him and Mandy became aware of the much less-impressive looking white guy in the office as well. Both of them were in suits, which meant they were either travelling businessmen or government. She looked up into the first man's dark-chocolate eyes—he was staring at her—and she decided he was too intense to be a salesman—very Secret-Agent-Man type.

"Do you need a room?" she asked to break the tension.

"You could say that." He still wasn't smiling as he dragged a small folder out of his inside pocket. He flipped it open and Mandy could see the shiny shield with "FBI" written in big letters. "I'm Special Agent Victor Henriksen. That's Special Agent Calvin Reidy," he jerked his chin toward the white guy. "We're tracking down… persons of interest. In a couple very serious cases."

"Really?" Mandy asked brightly. "I thought tracking was all computerized now? Just plug a picture into the traffic grid cameras and 'Hey presto!' –trail found."

"Unfortunately, it's not that simple," the white guy, Reidy, said, moving forward.

"I wish it were that simple," Henriksen muttered.

Mandy gave a rueful shrug. "Oh, well. Guess you can't believe everything you see on TV, huh?" she said teasingly. Reidy's lips twitched a little at the joke, but Henriksen's face didn't change. He just stared at her, waiting.

She coughed. "We don't have anybody staying tonight. Not yet, anyhow."

"The fellas we're looking for would've been through here two, maybe three, weeks ago," Henriksen said. "Brothers, mid-twenties, taller than average, and dangerous."

"Um..." The noise Mandy made was to stall, so she could brace herself. If this went where she thought it was going, she needed to be prepared.

"Some people might consider them good-looking," Henriksen continued, with a mild sneer for the poor, deluded people. "They drive a black Chevy, late '60s model. Kansas license plates beginning with KA, ending with 5."

Reidy reached around his partner and put a couple pictures down on the counter. One was a blow-up of a picture from a student ID card. The other was a crude drawing that looked like the kind done from witness descriptions of suspects. Both were awful but completely recognizable after how much time she'd spent staring at the real deal.

The McGillicuddy sons. Wanted by the FBI.

Holy shit.

What really caught her attention was the student ID from Stanford. The dude had gone to _Stanford?_

Mandy bent over the desk to hide her expression. "You said they were tall?"

"Yes," Henriksen confirmed. He tapped the student ID photo. "This one is well over six feet."

"Well, they look kind of familiar, or at least this one does," she tapped the ID photo. "What did they do?"

"We'd just like to talk to them, miss," the white guy, Reidy, said as he gathered up the pictures.

Mandy looked at him in disbelief. "Two Special Agents from the FBI are wandering around Nowheresville, USA, looking for two dudes for no particular reason? I don't think so." Even if TV was wrong about a lot of things, Mandy was pretty sure that would be a waste of Bureau resources.

Henriksen's voice was unfriendly. "Whatever they may have done–"

"Or witnessed," his partner broke in.

"–or witnessed, we are unable to discuss that with you."

Mandy sucked her lips in to stop an equally unfriendly (but infinitely more foolish) retort from escaping her. "Um, do you have a warrant?"

Henriksen's eyebrow went up. "Do we need one?"

"Yeah, I'm, uh, pretty sure you do. It _is_ personal information, after all."

Just then Claire came out of their private door. "Mandy, lunch!" she called and drew all eyes towards her. Mandy saw her pause as she caught sight of the two agents. Claire's gaze came back to her. She held out the bowl of mac and cheese. "What's going on?"

Everyone started talking, started explaining, but in true Claire fashion her sister ignored the suited-up symbols of officialdom to listen to Mandy's version first. It made a happy little ball inside of her that Mandy would deny vehemently to any outsider. While she told her tale, Reidy returned the pictures to the counter. Claire's gaze flicked over them before coming back to Mandy.

When Mandy said she'd asked the agents for a warrant, Claire's eyebrows went up. "I'm impressed. I didn't realize you'd actually paid attention," she murmured, and Mandy blushed at being teased.

She _always_ paid attention… She just didn't always remember, that's all.

Claire smiled and patted Mandy's shoulder reassuringly. Then she turned to the two FBI agents. "I'm afraid she's right, gentlemen. Unless this request falls under the _PATRIOT Act_ , you don't have automatic right of access to our customers' information."

Mandy could practically hear Agent Henriksen growl.

Reidy stepped in front of his partner. "Can you at least look at the pictures and tell us if it's worth our time to get a warrant?" he asked mildly.

With a small shrug, Claire picked up the pictures. She looked at the bland, line drawing and snorted. "This looks like a lot of guys." She put it down and picked up the blown-up student ID card. She frowned lightly.

"You recognize him?" Henriksen asked.

"Well, kind of," Claire responded slowly. "I mean, he looks sort of like Kyle, rather the actor who played Kyle in _Roswell_ , but I highly doubt that that's the guy you're looking for."

Ooo, Mandy thought in admiration, nice way to add a touch of truth to the mix. They'd argued about who the McGillicuddys reminded them of and Nick Wechsler had been Claire's pick for the shaggy-haired one. Mandy hadn't agreed, but whatever.

Claire handed the pictures back to Agent Reidy, and Mandy risked a look at Henriksen.

The agent was scowling unhappily, and his eyes were hard and unfriendly. His partner continued the conversation. "You're saying we'd be wasting our time getting a warrant?"

Claire shrugged again, more firmly. "I can't answer that, since I don't know how important your time is to you."

Henriksen finally opened his mouth, probably to say something cutting, but his partner gripped his arm tightly, shutting him up. He pulled Henriksen to the corner and started muttering to him.

Mandy listened as hard as she could, but she only caught a few words: "St. Louis" and "already dead" being a couple of the recognizable bits. Henriksen muttered back "not real" and "their father" so maybe the younger McGillicuddys weren't the target.

The discussion in the corner grew in urgency (though not in volume) until the dark-skinned agent threw up his hands. "Enough!" he not-quite shouted. "If the DDO tells me to hunt moose in Arkansas then that's what I'm gonna do. And so are you."

The silence that followed was awkward but pretending to look anywhere but at the two agents would've been even more stupid, so Mandy didn't (except for a quick look at her sister to see if she'd caught any of that). Claire was watching the agents too, face calm and expression neutral.

Dark looks flashed their way then Reidy smiled at them, professionally friendly. "Thank you for your time, ladies. Perhaps we'll see you again."

Nods all around and the two men walked out the door. They got into a bland sedan that screamed law enforcement. That was when Claire turned to Mandy. "So," she began. "Care to tell me what that was all about?"

Mandy played dumb. "They do need a warrant, right?"

Claire called her on it. "Don't play dumb," she said. "You recognized those pictures, I know you did! You drooled so hard over all three of the McGillicuddys, we could've filled a bathtub with it."

Mandy looked away; she hadn't been _that_ bad. She picked at the chipped linoleum desk top. Claire waited.

"I dunno. It was just… He was _so_ arrogant!" Mandy finally blurted out. "Like I should just take his word because I was a stupid backwater girl from a little motel in the middle of nowhere. Like I wouldn't understand."

"You know they _were_ dangerous," Claire said softly, and yeah, Mandy did know that, but–

"No more dangerous than Ron Hermann," she argued, and Claire nodded because it was true.

Ron was a decent guy who worked at the hardware store. He had a wife and two kids, and he coached Little League during the summer. He'd served in some Special Forces unit in Kosovo during the worst of the conflict and he'd come back with 'problems'. Every once in a while, he booked into one of their back rooms away from his family and his peaceful street, and quietly flipped out. Mom would take him food on a covered tray, knock on the door to let him know it was there, then take the hell off so that he wouldn't see her and freak if he opened the door. If he needed to be a ghost in order to not kill everyone he saw, then they'd let him be a ghost. They never charged him for the room.

"What are you going to do if those guys do come back with a warrant?" Claire asked.

"Do you think they're gonna?"

Claire laughed. "I'm thinking that guy, Henriksen, was way too intense to let himself be jerked around by _two_ 'backwater girls from a little motel in the middle of nowhere'."

That was a 'yes' then.

Too bad Mandy didn't have an answer.

* * *

_Dear Diary,_

_I've decided I hate camping. When I have kids, I am never going camping with them. They can go with their father, their best friends' families, or their Scout troops. I will stay home where there are blankets and central heating and large bathtubs I can fill with hot water._

_We were in the woods for a week, staking out spots that were more likely to attract the rogue cooginators and all I can say is that there were bugs, damp, rot, and more bugs. Oh, and a cold rain that made everything slippery or slimy._

_Rufus was so excited by it all he reminded me of a little kid at Christmas. He wouldn't stop asking questions and taking notes. He means to be a hunter full time, I guess. I asked him why, but all he said was that he'd seen some things in Vietnam that made hunting the supernatural seem like a sane choice._

_We cleaned out the nest and I guess I did pretty well. Dad gave me a pat on the back, at least. It seems sad that we had to kill the whole pack of Cooginators, about twenty of them including babies, just because there were too many in the park. They were only trying to survive._

…

Mandy took Claire's comments seriously and decided what to do when, not if, Special Agent Henriksen returned. She put the clippings and scribbles in a large brown envelope and marked it with the name on the registration card and the date she'd found them. Then she put the envelope in the Lost and Found box behind the counter. The FBI could chew on those while the diaries were safe in her room. It was stupid; they weren't hers, and she was pretty sure none of the McGillicuddys were coming back for them, but she didn't want the FBI to have them. They were _personal_.

And private.

And _none of their business_.

Well… They weren't hers either, but she'd read enough of Mary's story—nearly two volumes worth—that they felt more hers than not. Mary was a friend (a weird friend with scary parents) and she worried about her.

So she tucked the satchel they'd come in up on her shelf and only took out one book at a time, keeping it safe in her own bag unless she was actually reading it and she read as fast as she could. She may have hidden them from the feds, but her mother knew she'd found them, and if Agent Henriksen came back with his warrant when Mom was on the desk…

Yeah. Not going to think about it.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_Jimi Hendrix is dead. Drug overdose, they say. I think I'm more sad than shocked. He was so young and so talented, and so very, very unhappy._

_Life is too short._

…

Mandy raced through the journals, speeding through the rest of Mary's summer (angry spirits and a poltergeist), and through the start of school (tenth grade, no extra-curriculars, no 'magic moments' with her arch-enemy). She wanted to know if Mary's second year of high school would be better than the first. She wanted to know if the thing with Johnny Winchester ever repeated itself. Mostly, she wanted to know if Mary ever got out of the life she hated. Did she find her happy ending?

So she plopped down on the bed in an empty room, vacuum standing idle and accusing in the middle of the floor, and opened the diary at her bookmark.

Housekeeping could wait.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_Sometimes I think people are seriously crazy. Werewolves and ghosts are easier to understand than human beings._

_Virgil Moseley, who's a junior, is "colored" (they still use that word here). He and his sister are the only black kids in Lawrence High and they both seem really nice and hard-working, although apparently Missy is a little odd. Liddy told me that Missy told Steve Harper (who's a bully and a jerk) that his girlfriend was sleeping with someone else, and that was it. He and his buddies decided she needed to "learn her place"._

_Of course, Virgil wouldn't let them do that to his sister. From what Liddy said, it started out with pushing and name-calling but it got ugly quick. It wasn't about Missy's announcement anymore; it was about them being colored and Steve's group being Neanderthals. Then Johnny Winchester stepped in – on Virgil's side – and he pulled his buddy Brad and the rest of the football team into it, and the racist pigs had to back down!_

_I couldn't believe it when Liddy told me. The football team – who specialize in exclusion and privilege – stood up for someone outside their little circle. Liddy also told me they don't let anyone pick on her either. I may have to rethink my opinion of them, or at least wonder if they're not as obnoxious as I know they are._

_I also have to wonder what I would have done if I'd been there._

_I could've defended Virgil. Physically, I could have easily stood up to Steve Harper and his friends. They rely on their reputations and their numbers for their power, but they don't know how to fight._

_And yet…_

_Even the thought of doing something so revealing, so attention-grabbing… There would be questions: How had I done it? Where had I learned it? Why did I learn it? _

_My dad would freak out. He'd probably make us move again and that would upset Mom since Lawrence is actually close to her family. Kind of. Closer than California anyway._

_Would I have stood up for Virgil Moseley? I wish I knew._

…

The entry made Mandy stop. What would she have done? She wanted to think that she would've stuck up for Virgil Moseley but maybe she wouldn't have.

Experts claimed humans were social animals, that they liked to be around other people, but sometimes Mandy thought that humans weren't placid herd animals: they were pack animals like wolves and lions—predators who were just waiting to take out the loners and the weak. And high school kind of trained them to be that way. She hadn't said anything when Jeff Johansen kept stealing Carl Blakes' lunch—hadn't even wondered if she should. She'd just shrugged and written it off as high school. She hadn't done anything when Jeff pushed Carl into the lockers and called him a fag. And she hadn't done anything when Jeff started to punch the crap out of him, either. She'd stood to the side, frozen, _finally_ wondering what to do, how to stop it…

_Claire_ had stood up to Jeff.

She'd just dived right in and knocked Jeff off Carl. Then she'd arranged for her fellow school councilors to be hanging around during the most dangerous times for Carl, since they were respectful, steady students who would be believed over rich, bad-boy Jeff. They waited at the doors for all the students to be in. They loitered in the halls. They hung out in the cafeteria at lunch, keeping a watchful eye on the other students.

When Jeff tried to start something with Carl in the art room, Claire had been there. She'd stood up to Jeff, calling him on his bigotry, and she ended up in hospital getting a cast on her arm because of it. They'd pressed charges, Claire and Mom, but Jeff's parents had arranged for him to go to some kind of remedial school for assholes. After that his gang kind of dissolved into druggy drop-outs who never showed up, and stupid petty criminals who spent more time at the cop-shop than in school.

Thanks to Claire, Mandy and her classmates hadn't faced any serious bullying since.

Sometimes all it took was one.

* * *

_Dear Diary,_

_It happened again._

_I was in the cafeteria, getting my lunch and minding my own business. When I turned around Winchester was looking at me. I couldn't… I couldn't look away. For a moment, I couldn't even breathe and I certainly couldn't move. I just stood there like a looby. I'm sure my mouth was hanging open. Then Liddy bumped into me and broke the spell._

_I don't understand why it happened!_

_Yes, he's cute and he has the nicest eyes, but he's still Johnny Winchester, football hero and junior playboy._

_I know he isn't all bad. He did stick up for Virgil Moseley and his sister. Plus he spent Thanksgiving bringing turkey dinners to people who didn't have families to share it with. At least that's what Liddy told me. And he's a Big Brother._

_It's like one of those novels that gush about couples being "destined for each other" or "two halves of a whole." Except I don't believe in either of those things. Love develops from shared interests and values, in spending time together talking and getting to know each other. You don't fall in love with a stranger! You get infatuated, or get attracted to strangers, but infatuation and attraction aren't love._

_I'm not in love with Johnny Winchester!_

…

Mandy smiled. It might not be love but there was some serious lust happening between the two of them. However, she'd bet half her savings that neither of them would act on it until senior prom, or some stereotypical event like that. They were too caught up in the little Montague and Capulet thing they had going.

She glanced at her watch, wondering how much more time she had before someone—like her mom—came looking. The answer was 'not enough'. She sighed, then carefully marked her place, put the old diary in her cart, and got on with what she was supposed to be doing.

* * *

_Dear Diary,_

_I didn't get a car for my birthday–_

…

Big surprise there.

…

_–Instead they gave me a silver charm bracelet that was forged using holy water and then purified in salt. All the charms were handmade using blessed materials chosen for maximum protection._

_It's beautiful and I hate it._

...

Mary didn't get a car for Christmas either.

She did get shirts and the latest Beatles album from her relatives, an etched silver knife set (?) from her parents, and stuff like socks and necklaces from various relatives. Except for the knives, it was almost normal.

On New Year's Eve, the whole family went to some haunted battleground in Missouri and "cleaned it out" ("We got ghosts for the whole family!" Mandy heard in some annoying shopping-network voice. "Come on down!")

Needless to say, Mary's entry on spending the last days of Christmas break hanging out in a Civil War cemetery in the snow was not a happy one.

* * *

_Dear Diary,_

_I did something stupid. At least, according to Dad it was stupid._

_I was in the gym. It was my turn to help clean the equipment, so I was in the ball room when the cheerleaders came in for practice. I didn't see what happened, but I heard it. Shouting that turned into screams, a thump that indicated a bad fall (I'm very familiar with that sound – too familiar)._

_I ran out and Amy Little was lying in a heap and there was blood. The other girls were standing around uselessly screaming, or kneeling beside Amy and uselessly patting her cheeks and hands. Useless, being the important description._

_I took control of the situation since their coach wasn't in the gym, and the girls were, well… They were useless! I sent Jenny to the office to call for an ambulance. I sent Barb to the Nurse's office. Towels out of the locker room. Ice from the cafeteria. A tourniquet to control the bleeding. I did a basic check for spinal injury and concussion._

_I HAD to! (which is what I told Dad.)_

_She might have bled to death if I hadn't stepped in._

_Afterwards, everyone was all crowded around me, thanking me, and asking me questions like, "How did I do that?" and "Where did I learn that?" As people came in they repeated the story until it was all over the school._

_That would've been bad enough, but the vice-principal called my house. He talked to my parents and told them how brave and selfless and smart I'd been. _

_They want to give me some kind of award._

_Dad's furious, of course. "Hardly keeping a low profile," he said._

_What was I supposed to do?_

_I said that it was our job, right? Just because it wasn't a hunt doesn't stop our responsibility to save people. Amy had needed saving and I was the only person in that gym who had the knowledge and the training to do it._

_He agreed. Reluctantly, but in the end he agreed. Mostly because Mom backed me up._

_My family is so twisted._

_We can only be heroes in the dark where nobody can see what we truly are. We live the most meaningful part of our lives at night._

_I want to have a daylight life. I don't want to hide._

* * *

Agent Henriksen and his partner showed up with a warrant on Tuesday.

Claire was working the front desk because Mandy was helping their mom re-grout the bathroom in 7A, because handing Claire any kind of tool was akin to asking her to commit suicide—or accidental homicide—with optional dismemberment. Once she'd read the warrant, her sister handed over the registration card and the brown envelope without fuss, and the agents looked through the card and the envelope with as little comment. At least that's what Claire told them later.

"What are you talking about?" Mom asked as she passed the potatoes.

"Some federal agents came by with a warrant," Claire answered. "They wanted the records for the McGillicuddys."

Mom frowned as she threw her mind back nearly a month. "Father and sons, right? All really tall."

"Mm-hm," Claire nodded wordlessly since her mouth was full.

"Did you give them the stuff that was left behind?"

"Yup. I even let them take a photocopy of the card." She snickered abruptly. "Henriksen told me not to destroy it."

"Destroy it?" Mom said in disbelief. "It's a business record; I'm not allowed to destroy it. They do realize that, right?"

Claire shrugged. "I think he just wanted to be intimidating."

"Ah. _That_ kind of agent," Mom said enlightened. She'd run into quite a few self-important types when they lived in D.C. "Well, hopefully they'll have what they need and they'll never come back."

"Yup, hopefully," Claire agreed and the subject was dropped in favor of devouring their mother's crunchy skin chicken (which was totally worth the attention). Mandy bumped her sister's foot under the table and gave her a small smile in thanks. Claire smiled back and winked. By saying what she had, Claire had let Mom believe she'd handed over the diaries without actually lying.

Mandy had the best big sister _ever_!

* * *

_Dear Diary,_

_I think I'm falling in love with Johnny Winchester._

_He came up to me in the cafeteria to thank me for what I did for Amy. He shook my hand and I swear there was an electrical current. I looked at him. He looked at me and there was no air, just this fluttering, sparkling noise like fairy wings._

_He asked me out. It'll be a group thing, going with him and his friends to a movie, but still. He asked me out and I said yes!_

_Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! No way is Dad going to let me go out with him, even if he were a hunter, which he isn't._

_I don't care. I'm going anyway._

_This is the third time he's had this effect on me. If that's not a sign of something then I don't know what would be._


	3. Losers

* * *

  
_Dear Diary,_

_It was our first date tonight and we went bowling with some of John's friends. It was strange and fun and awkward in turns. I went bowling with Johnny Winchester and his friends from the football team and their girlfriends! _

_They didn't know what to do, really. They're not allowed to tease me the way they have been, now that Johnny's... I don't know what we're doing actually, but I'm excited._

_I keep looking for the catch._

* * *

  
Wednesday afternoon, Jeff Johansen showed up with Cherry Corbett. Mrs. Corbett (whose marriage seemed to be more a matter of a shared address than anything) stayed in the car. Maybe she was trying to be discreet, but it wasn't as if her bright red dye job wasn't visible from five miles away—on a moonless night. Mandy looked at her as the woman fixed her (clashing) red lipstick and adjusted the way her boobs sat in her bra. (They needed the help.)

Her husband was something high up in the County administration. He volunteered with just about every charity and he coached just about every junior league sport in town. He was one of the nicest, mildest guys Mandy had ever encountered. Everyone liked Mr. Corbett. Except for maybe Mrs. Corbett.

Maybe Mr. Corbett liked the idea of his wife having sex with other guys?

Maybe he had performance issues and had agreed to look the other way?

Mandy snorted: maybe she was just a cheating bitch.

Jeff came in to get the key, striding to the desk as if he was going to offer to buy out the whole place. Mandy watched him with her mouth maybe a little open because, hel-LO! Her sister, the daughter of the owner of the place, had pressed charges against him in high school. Surely he remembered that?

On the other hand, Salvation's only choices for an illicit romantic fling were here, the truck stop on the highway (where you brought your own bedroom or shared a bunkhouse), or the Starburst Hotel (which had been a flop house in the '30s and hadn't been cleaned since).

"I need the biggest bed you got."

From the fumes she could've lit with a match, they'd obviously come from the bar. She looked at the clock: only three in the afternoon. (Loser!)

Oh- _kay_. No need to wonder what they'd be doing. Not that there'd been any doubt.

"That'll be the suite at the end. The rate for single occupancy is fifty dollars; doub–"

"Fifty bucks," Johansen practically shouted. He leaned over the counter, trying to get into Mandy's space. "No way anything in this shithole is worth more than thirty."

Mandy stared at him in disbelief. (LoserLoserLoser!)

"It has an emperor-sized bed and a jet bathtub," she finally said. (It was actually smaller than a regular tub because of the space needed for the motor, the tubing, and the insulation, but no need to tell him that.) "And the rate is fifty dollars; fifty-five for two adults. Check out time is 11 a.m. tomorrow." Not that they'd be staying that long. Tonight was the fundraiser to buy a new bus for the high school and Mr. Corbett was one of the main organizers. There was no way Mrs. Corbett could get away with _not_ being there.

He leaned closer; Mandy leaned away from the smell.

Jeff's fists were clenched and his face was turning red. "Do you really think I'm going to pay that much for a room in your shitty no-tell motel?" He growled it low and menacing and Mandy was reminded of what he'd done to poor Carl before Claire had stepped in.

Claire…

Claire had called her brave. Had said she admired Mandy because she put herself out there, kind of like what Mary had done when Amy got hurt. Claire and Mary wouldn't let themselves be intimidated by a small-town bully. Not when there was a direct-to-the-cops panic button under the counter and backup was just a shout away. She felt her heart rate speed up and her breath get quick and shallow, but she didn't let herself blink or swallow.

"If you don't like the cost of our facility you're more than welcome to go over to the Starburst Lounge and Motel. They have hourly rates." And a continuing gang war between the bedbugs and the cockroaches.

He stared at her, eyebrows lowering, lip lifting in a nasty sneer. She held his gaze even as her knee inched closer to the button.

"Fine, fifty dollars!" He scowled even as he pulled out his wallet (black with a cheap silver playboy bunny engraved in it). "But the bed better be one of those vibrating ones."

"Actually, none of our rooms have vibrating beds," she answered thinly through the dizzy relief in her brain. "It's too hard to get the stains out of the covers."

Ohmygod! She'd actually said that.

It was true, but still... She'd said it out loud! She could feel her cheeks grow warm.

Then she noticed that Jeff's face was just as red as hers and it was suddenly okay because, really, he was only a year older than Claire; just nineteen, and stupid with it (and probably for the rest of his life too). Maybe he was still a virgin, and that's why he was being such a dick. He finally had a chance at, um, popping his cherry (heh) and it was making him nervous.

Or maybe he was actually gay and he was desperate to deny it, to prove he was completely and totally hetero by sleeping with the town bike? It would explain the way he'd treated Carl.

She watched with growing calm as Jeff fumbled with his wallet, pulling out crinkled fives and tens and slapping them on the counter. "I need you to fill in a registration card.

"You're shitting me! For one af– night?"

Mandy shrugged. "Business records. In case we get audited." Then, because she couldn't _not_ say it, "Or in case the police are investigating someone."

Jeff's face went from sunburn red to dead-fish pale. "They do that?"

Again she shrugged. "It's been known to happen." Like two days ago, but she wasn't about to go into details. It was enough to watch his hand tremble as he filled in the form (as J. Smith. Could he _be_ more clichéd?) Jeff Johansen also worked for the county, but at a substantially less powerful position than Cherry Corbett's husband. Mr. Corbett could get him fired and make him essentially unhireable without moving across the state. In a subtle way, making him so nervous was payback for all the times Jeff had picked on Carl Blake and Wanda Schmidt. And Claire.

There were little moist fingerprints on the registration card, and he didn't leave the office as cocky as he'd entered. Mandy managed to wait until the door closed before laughing.

I hope your 'cherry pie' is worth it, she sniggered to herself.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary,_

_Today, I met John's father. (His mother passed away when he was ten.)_

_He's a very sweet man, but quite sad._

_He grew up in Poland during WWII under the Nazis, which had to have been awful. He didn't talk about it much. Instead he talked about how the_

_Communists took over and how they weren't much better than the Germans had been (except no extermination camps)._

_John got him to tell the story of how they escaped to Sweden. It was hair-raising! For years they tried, requesting political asylum at first then just trying to get across the border into a free country, but the security forces always seemed to watching so they usually called it off. Then all of a sudden, just after they discovered she was pregnant, everything fell into place. Mr. Winchester called John their lucky baby, because he's why everything went so smoothly, yet he didn't seem grateful, just sad._

_Mr. and Mrs. Winchester made it to the coast and crossed the Baltic Sea during a storm. Anna, John's mother, was sick the whole time. He said she cursed him in Polish, Russian and German. Mr. Winchester did a hilarious impersonation of the boat captain (a smarmy Englishman who sneered at everything but good whiskey) who taught her how to curse in English._

_When they got to Sweden, they went right to the U.S. Embassy and they were granted asylum almost immediately! That's when Agnieszka and Maciej Wiœniewski (I had him write it down) became Anna and Matt Winchester. They lived in Indiana at first – John was born there – and then they moved here to Lawrence. They had ten great years in America before Anna died suddenly. A heart attack they think, but they don't know. One day she was fine, the next she was dead. (It could've been an angry spirit, a mutated shtriga, or something of that nature, but I didn't want to pry.)_

_Mr. Winchester left us alone soon after, and I didn't need John to know that he was going to get very drunk. I recognized the look from some of my uncles and cousins when they're reliving very bad times._

_I think he does that a lot. I think John's practically had to raise himself since his mother died. It would explain his need to belong to a group like the football team. They've all been friends a long time, and I think he has dinner at Brad's house quite often._

_It's good that he has friends he can turn to._

…

Huh.

It was strange to think that to John and Mary, and all the kids of their generation, World War Two hadn't been that long ago. There would have been people all over the place who'd served. Nowadays, Gulf War vets were all over, and veterans of other actions, too, like Ron Hermann, but nothing on the scale of WWII.

And the way John's dad had talked about escaping from communist Poland…

Nowadays, communism, like Nazism, was just a blip on the political spectrum. There was still Cuba, but it was about the only overtly communist country left—unless you watched Fox News. Then communism was a rampant and creeping disease threatening to take away Americans' expensive health-care system and replace it with a cheaper one… run by homosexual death panels. (She grinned because she'd had a lot of fun goading Claire after they'd watched Michael Moore discuss his new movie.)

"What you up to?" Claire asked when she came into the kitchen to grab a snack.

Mandy looked up from the computer screen. "Looking up stuff."

"What stuff?" Claire asked absently.

"Just what life was like in the sixties," she answered. "Did you know that 16 million Americans served during World War Two? That was just over ten percent of the population! There were nearly 2 million in Korea, and another 2 million in Vietnam. So, by 1970, one in ten Americans had fought in some kind of war."

Claire blinked at her. "No, I didn't know that," she said after a moment. "Wow."

"It sort of explains why the peace movement was so strong. There would hardly be a family that didn't have a vet," Mandy continued. "And a lot of them came back messed up too—injured or suffering PTSD. Seriously messed up stuff and hard to ignore, right?"

"The media coverage helped, at least with Vietnam," Claire replied. "Reporters in the '60s had the same freedom to report what they wanted as they'd had in World War Two, but TV gave it an immediacy print media of the 1940s didn't have."

Mandy recognized the argument from a project Claire had done on how television coverage (or the lack of it) influenced popular opinion. Mandy had enjoyed reading it for her (and pointing out the difference between "its" and "it's"). Claire had even bought that book, _Manufacturing Consent_ by that guy—Noah, Norm Chompsky?—because of it.

"It wasn't just happening over there," Mandy quoted. "It was happening–"

"–right in front of us," Claire finished. "It's why Bush won't let the coffins of dead soldiers be photographed anymore. It doesn't stop them from dying, just stops most people being aware, and therefore concerned, about it." Claire's voice grew heated. "It's also why he says this war is about fighting big, bad terrorists and not a small group of uneducated, fanatical, peasants. With the one, the States is protecting itself from genocidal, racist nutbags, and the other is huge, industrial America picking on the tiny, poverty-stricken Afghanistan. Everybody wanted to be seen as the hero; very few want to be known as a bully."

"I was talking about Vietnam," Mandy reminded her sister. "Not the Middle East."

"It's the same thing," Claire scowled. "We shouldn't be there."

Mandy lifted her hands. "I'm not getting into this with you again."

"The war is wrong and American soldiers are dying for a bad cause. It's not fair to them or to their families."

"I get your point, I do, but I am not going to talk about the Middle East," Mandy repeated because Claire could go on for _hours_ about it.

"Fine." Claire turned her scowl on the innocent little apple she was holding. "At least you can see the similarities. You're not a total sheeple," she said before she stomped out of the kitchen.

Mandy waited until Claire was safely out of earshot before snickering. Her sister's reaction to any talk of war was kind of predictable in a left-wing-nut way. Normally Mandy would agree that war sucked, but there was no way Claire was going to convince her that World War Two hadn't needed to be fought. (Death camps, anyone?)

Still, Claire's insistence that countries shouldn't ask their soldiers to fight (and die) unless it was absolutely for the best reasons was kind of endearing. It went along with her insistence that politicians should be absolutely and 100% trustworthy. Romantic idealism, Claire had called it, and it was another reason why her sister didn't belong in Salvation. She couldn't change the world from here.

One more month. Thirty-one days. Then Claire would be gone.

Mandy closed the diary and went to find her sister.

* * *

  
On Friday, Leila showed up at the office for a bitch-session, so Mandy put away Mary's diaries in order to listen to her friend's latest woes with her (cheating-asshole) boyfriend and (over-protective single-parent) dad over endless games of Cribbage.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" Mandy asked in relation to nothing at all.

Leila stared at her a moment before laughing lightly. "Fuck no. I'm not into all the new-age woo-woo shit. You know that."

And Mandy _did_ know that, so she had no excuse for pushing it. "So you believe that there's nothing out there that hasn't been discovered or can't be explained. Six."

"Well, in outer space, yeah. Fifteen for two." Leila moved her peg. "You do mean in space, right? You're not talking about Nessie or Bigfoot or any of that urban legend crap, are you?"

Mandy shrugged uncomfortably and played a card.

"You _are_! Oh my god, girl! When did you go all _Unexplained Mysteries_ on me?"

That made Mandy even more uncomfortable and she watched as Leila pegged another three points from her careless playing. "I've never really _not_ believed but… It's just I've been reading some stuff that makes it seem like this stuff is really out there–"

"Like _The X-Files_ slogan: 'The Truth is Out There'." Leila smirked then paused. "Shit, I can't even remember the theme song anymore. Damn."

"Not aliens, but yeah, I guess it could be X-Filean." She counted up her pathetically few points.

"You should talk to my dad," Leila said as she counted up into the double-digits. "He's really into that shit. He's got encyclopedias filled with weird stuff: monsters, ghosts… talking to the dead. Actually," she continued as she shuffled. "He's started reading this new series—I forget what it's called—but it's about these two brothers who spend all their time fighting ghosts and monsters? It's, like, so fake, because they travel in this old gas-guzzler, but they never run out of money. _And_ they get their asses kicked all the time but they never break any bones or end up in hospital."

"That sounds cool," Mandy said because it did. In fact, it sounded kind of familiar.

"Dad's on book three, I think. People in a small town getting killed by a malevolent water spirit—very Stephen King," Leila teased lightly as she dealt out the cards.

"I don't mind Stephen King." Mandy smiled as she said it because she knew her friend couldn't stand him.

"Editing, dude." Leila shuddered dramatically. "Anyway, I'll bring over the ones Dad's finished. Then you and he can geek out over grave desecrations."

Mandy jumped at the similarity to what Mary had described in her diaries. "I'd appreciate it."

Leila looked up at her and grinned. "Just as long as you know, I'm going to mock you unmercifully for believing that crap. Can you get any more pathetic?"

Mandy grinned back. "At least I don't have a loser boyfriend."

"At least I _have_ a boyfriend."

"You have an extra hundred and ten pounds that you don't need."

"Hey! He's not that skinny."

"He's a stick," Mandy snorted. "I'm surprised his bones don't poke you, like the springs on that abomination you call a couch."

"Pfft!" Leila answered intelligently and Mandy knew she'd won.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary,_

_He kissed me._

_I don't… It wasn't like I expected. It was actually a little disgusting. It was wet and he tasted like pizza. I know it's naïve, but I actually expected fireworks or at least a mild adrenaline response! It was about as exciting as digging out a grave to get at the bones. (Although he certainly smelled better than any grave I've ever been to.)_

_Still, if that's what it's going to feel like… I'm not sure._

_I need to think about this._

…

First times were supposed to be awful. It was like a rule or something.

Mandy remembered her first kiss: Adam Lovell. They'd stood on the road for what seemed like hours with their tongues going around and around and around and never doing anything. Her reaction had been a lot like Mary's. When she'd whined to her sister about it, Claire had laughed and given her one of her romances (and not a young adult one with all the good bits taken out). It had been eye-opening (and very exciting).

The next time she and Adam had kissed, she'd tried some of the moves described in the book: nibbling on his lips, exploring his palette with the tip of her tongue, sucking his tongue into her mouth. He'd liked it better. _She_ still hadn't been impressed.

That was the end of Adam.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_The second kiss was much, much better. Fluttery stomach, heart racing, mild electric shock even… the whole nine yards._

_Maybe I'll keep him! **♥** **♥** **♥**_

* * *

  
Mom was helping a family of tourists check out when Mandy walked into the office, ice cream cone dripping in the early-summer heat. "I realize you didn't want your son to watch _Casa Erotica_ , however you didn't block the channel," she said patiently. Mandy glanced at their son who was at least sixteen if not more, and nearly smirked: he was in such deep shit!

The phone rang before Mandy could pass through to the back area so, since Mom was busy, she swallowed the last of her cone and picked it up.

"Sleep Easy Motel, how can I help you?" she said, pulling a Wet-Wipe from the can to clean her fingers.

"Uh, hi," said the guy on the other end and Mandy froze. She knew that voice. "This is Doug, um, McGillicuddy. I, uh, stayed there nearly a month ago with my brother and my dad?"

She stole a glance at her mom, but she was still busy explaining that porn-on-the-sly still counted as porn watched. She turned her back on the crowd and took a step away. "Yeah, I remember," she said softly. "Classic Chevy, right?" And foxy eyes, really cute dimples… and a couple FBI guys on his ass. "How can I help you?"

"I don't know if you can," the guy gave a short, nervous laugh. "The thing is, when we stayed there, we left some stuff behind..."

"The newspaper clippings," Mandy said. She took another step away from the desk. (Thank God for cordless phones.) "And some diaries."

Doug (if that was his real name) huffed out a breath. "Yeah, the diaries. Didn't even know Dad had kept those..." His voice trailed away. "Do you still have them?"

"We keep them for thirty days, standard policy," she answered. "But if we know you're interested in reclaiming them, we can hold them longer."

"Oh yeah, Dad… Dad would've definitely wanted us to keep hold of them." His voice was low and kind of choked up, and Mandy knew something bad had happened. Before she could ask, he cleared his throat. "How long will you keep them," he asked firmly.

For as long as my mom doesn't find out I'm hiding evidence from federal authorities, she almost answered. "We have lots of room so there's no real rush, but if you could collect them before summer's end that would be good." Because she'd really, really like to see him again; maybe strike up a conversation that didn't involve more towels or the broken ice machine.

On the other hand, she couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't be her mother on the desk when he showed up looking for something Claire was supposed to have turned over to the FBI.

Bad, scary thought.

"Or I could mail them to you?" she offered.

"You'd… you'd do that?" He sounded surprised and grateful, and Mandy could picture him clearly with that bashful little smile of his…

"Yeah," she answered. "I can do that."

She got an address for a post office box in Sioux City (and tried not to wonder if that was where they actually lived) and promised to have them in the mail by the end of the week. The guy's obvious appreciation made her feel tingly warm in a way _Casa Erotica_ had never managed. She squirmed a little and knew her cheeks were flushed. She wriggled in her clothes, but that just made her even more aware of her body's reaction. Having her mother and a family of prudish tourists standing less than six feet away didn't help her embarrassment.

Stupid hormones.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary,_

_I don't believe it. I can't believe it._

_John just told me that he's talked his dad into letting him enlist in the Marines. He could get sent to Vietnam!_

_I asked him why. Why would he want to be a soldier and learn how to kill people? Why would he want to risk his life, which means risking our life together, the one we've been planning? _

_He says it's so he can go to college. He says he wants a decent education so that we can have a better life, but I know it's because his friend, Brad, has been called up. He doesn't want his best friend to go to war by himself._

_It's sweet and loyal and stupid and… GOD I don't want him to do this. _

_What am I going to do?_

…

Mandy stared at the entry. It was the last one in the volume, at least the last with words. She flipped through the remaining pages and they were all filled with pictures—bleak drawings of bleeding wings and dark fire. There were eyes, nearly human, staring out of the page from amidst gravestones and thorny brambles. Then there were the creatures that Mary had drawn and labeled: Wendigo, Black Dogs, Chupacabra, Woman in White, and other things that had Mandy sleeping with the light on.

It was as if, once John made his decision, Mary's life had turned into a nightmare of monsters and nothing else.

Mandy looked at the last volume, but didn't pick it up. When she'd sorted the books, she'd thought the nearly two-year gap had been caused by missing volumes. Now she thought it was because Mary hadn't written (as in _words_ ) much of anything in it.

Perhaps the book she'd set aside to be looked at last (because it was mostly pictures) covered those missing two years? If all Mary had done was draw freaky weird drawings (which she had) then it could easily cover two years.

She'd have to go through it, though, page by page, because what if John had been killed in Vietnam? What if he was seriously injured, or even paralyzed? He could have forgotten about Mary and never came back to get her. What would Mary have done? (Nothing good, Mandy guessed.) On the other hand, what if _Mary_ got hit by a car while crossing the road? Tragedies happened every day, she reminded herself. No need to go out and borrow more.

She looked at the malevolent eyes staring at her from the first page and closed the cover on the drawing.

She'd start looking through Mary's last diary tomorrow, when it was light out.


	4. Weepers

* * *

  
In the middle of the bright sunny day, with her MP3 playlist set to the boppiest, most cheerful songs she had, Mandy sat on the grass outside and started reading the last of Mary Campbell's diaries.

It was as freaky and disturbing as she'd feared.

There were lots of drawings of dead things (Mandy refused to identify them), stuff burning or bleeding, crosses and feathers, swords and stars, and ugly eyes watching from the pages. Worked into the pattern or boxed off and highlighted, the words "I miss him" and "I need him" showed up over, and over, and frigging _over_. Like she thought she could bring John back through repetition, or someone was pounding the message into her brain. The whole thing was scary and pathetic, but mostly it was creepy! Especially the eyes.

Mandy didn't like looking at those eyes.

She paused for a sip of her iced tea, a little warm and watery now that the ice had melted. It struck her that this kind of self-indulgent wallowing wasn't like Mary, at least not the Mary Campbell she'd grown to know. The Mary who'd written calmly about ghost hunting and vampires would've missed her boyfriend, sure, but she wouldn't have buried herself in weird-ass death drawings. She hardly seemed like the same person.

Maybe it was being in love? According to the books and the news, people did weird stuff when they were in love including writing bad poetry and getting the other person's name tattooed on their ass.

They also killed themselves.

Yet, Mary didn't seem like the type to dig herself an emo grave and jump in. In fact, there were snippets that hinted that in a lot of her life she was still the level-headed, determined person she'd been before she'd fallen in love. There'd be an entry detailing what she'd done, who she'd spoken to, things she'd thought or felt, perfectly lucid and normal, and then _whump!_ It was back to graphic representations of the theme: "Life Is A Wasteland Without John".

The more she read, the more Mandy came to think that being this desperately in love wasn't romantic. It was a curse. And like most curses, it probably wouldn't end well.

Like Claire and Jenny Connors, Mary and John were grand heartbreak waiting to happen.

Claire and Jenny had been together since tenth grade, secretly of course. Salvation was a small town and not very accepting of alternative lifestyles except in tourists who had money and would eventually leave. When Claire told her how they planned to come out at the prom, loud and proud, Mandy had worried because, well… because Jenny hadn't seemed strong enough to pull something like that off.

Then, early in their senior year, Jenny's parents had figured it out and had threatened to cut off college funding if Jenny didn't "get over it".

So Jenny had.

The bitch.

With another sigh, and a roll of her shoulders in a futile attempt to release some of the tension, Mandy reopened the diary and kept on going. She was on a deadline, after all.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary,_

_There was a letter from John today. I made myself wait until lunch in case it made me cry. (It did, of course. I miss him so much!)–_

…

There were suspiciously blurry spots on the page. It looked like Mary hadn't cried just at lunch.

…

_–He's finally being recalled from Da Nang, one of the last of his battalion and long past the rest of the Echo 2/1 Marines. He's going to Camp Pendleton in California. Which means, unless Vietnam flares up again, he'll be there until his time is up. No fighting, no bombing, no spraying, and no landmines! He'll be safe for the full two years!_

_Two years… So much can happen in two years._

…

And Mary continued to obsess about John getting killed (a picture of a plane getting shot out of the sky by a thrown thunderbolt), getting sick (a diseased heart filled with icky black goo), or just finding some California Girl and never going back to Lawrence (hippie chick with flowers and beads and not much else).

Mandy shut the book with a disgruntled snap. She knew she was pouting but she didn't care. It was Tuesday afternoon and it was dead slow on the desk. Mom and Claire were out marching in support of the gay couples suing Polk County for the right to get married. Mandy had agreed to stay behind on the off-chance that a customer might turn up. She'd planned to spend the time racing through the diaries but Mary was sooo filled with 'woe is me' that it was like trying to read the _Twilight_ books again: slog, slog, angst and slog.

The sun tried to brighten her up but the windows were too dusty.

Usually she washed the motel windows the week after she got back from visiting their dad in Washington. However, this year, Mandy decided, she might as well get an early start.

Mary's diaries had been a lot more interesting when she'd been hunting monsters with her parents and snarking about the cheerleaders.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary,_

_I stopped by the garage to share John's latest letter with Mr. Winchester. He didn't look so good and he smelled worse. Mr. Guenther, the owner, said he'd been coming in like that for a couple days just like he always did around the start of November because that's when his wife died._

_Poor man. He must have loved her very much._

_I stuck around and drove Mr. Winchester home. He rambled on and on about how his wife had made a bad deal and how he should have stopped her. He grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise and insisted that I promise to never make a deal like that. I agreed, even though I had no idea what kind of deal Mrs. Winchester could have made. Perhaps she'd slept with someone in Poland in order to get them out? That would've been horrible. _

_I asked, but Mr. Winchester just told me to go to hell, which really wasn't necessary. I mean, he could've just told me it was too private. Then he broke down crying. I had to practically carry him into the house. I put him on the couch with some water and some aspirin, and left him to sleep it off._

_All in all, it was really, really sad._

…

"Hey, Claire?"

"Hmm?"

"Did you know Poland didn't want to join the Communist Bloc after the war?" Mandy asked from her corner of the couch.

Claire finally looked up from the receipts she was sorting. "What?"

"During World War Two, America and Britain agreed to 'give' Poland to Russia. I mean, they just divided up the continent into capitalist and communist zones without thinking that the people ought to have a say."

"I did know that," Claire said. "It was at the Yalta Conference before the war had even ended. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin acted like they knew best for everyone. It was paternalistic imperialism at its worst."

"It explains why so many people wanted to defect," Mandy said.

"Hmm, maybe," Claire agreed, half-heartedly. "What brought this up?"

"John Winchester's parents escaped from Poland," Mandy replied. "They wanted their son born in a free country."

"Well, as much as I'm not sure America _is_ free, especially since 9/11, it's better than what they had under Stalinist Communism, and it's certainly better than being under Hitler and the Nazis." Claire turned back to the receipts. "Did you know the Yalta Conference was also how the Vietnam War got its start? The Allies decided to 'give' the country back to France, even though the Vietnamese people had fought with the U.S. against Japan."

Mandy hadn't known that. It made her wonder how much of the current state of the world could be traced back to the end of WWII. Probably a lot.

"You should look it up," Claire said with a smile as she went back her work. This time Mandy left her to it and wandered back to the living room.

She was tempted to do what Claire had suggested, but she'd promised to have the diaries in the mail by the end of the week. She closed the laptop and picked up the diary. She opened the page and was assaulted by more of Mary's nightmarish drawings. They made Mandy's stomach clench and not in a nice way. It was like watching a YouTube video of a stunt she knew was going to go horribly wrong.

Soft classic rock drifted from the radio, matching the lazy afternoon but totally jarring with the book in front of her. She closed it with a snap.

She still had a couple days before she'd promised to get the diaries in the mail. Maybe she'd spend a bit more time on Wikipedia following the links. She knew it was procrastinating, and she _did_ want to know what happened to them, but she was afraid it was something bad—really bad.

Right now, researching post-WWII Europe seemed like a better idea than looking at Mary's diaries.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary,_

_I was just sitting on the back porch, enjoying the sunshine, when I realized that it's been over a year since John left._

_I still miss him, I do, but I also know I won't die without him. I'm not sure why I thought that in the first place. People don't die of a broken heart, they just convince themselves to stop living. That's not going to happen to me._

…

Finally! Mandy thought joyfully. The real Mary was back!

It didn't last long.

A couple entries about school and fighting with her dad about keeping in contact with John (who, even as a Marine, didn't impress the old hunter), then after a short note about how Bruce Lee was really good-looking and, like a lightning bolt had struck, Mary was back to moaning and whining about John and the dark pictures were back.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary,_

_It's nearly summer break and instead of talking about what we're going to be hunting, my parents are talking about Watergate. It's unbelievable! The reports say that the burglars are definitely connected to the White House, maybe even as high as President Nixon!_

_Dad suspects some kind of possession, maybe demonic, and that's why Nixon did something so wicked. I think Dad likes Nixon and just doesn't want him being human and venal. As if being President gives a man heavenly powers or something._

_Mom's much more open to the "arrogantly stupid" theory, so they spend hours arguing back and forth. They research it like it's a hunt they're preparing for, which means we may not go on an actual hunt this year (unless one drops on our doorstep)._

_I never thought anything could take Dad's mind off "His Sacred Duty"!_

_Not that their new obsession has gotten me out of training or anything, but at least it takes my mind off of John for long periods._

_Only ten more months! It seems like forever–_

…

"Hey Mandy." Her father's voice on the phone was overly cheerful. "How are things out there in the boonies?" She knew, just from his tone, that he wanted to bail on the vacation this year.

Was she happy or upset? She didn't actually know.

It wasn't like she'd been fantasizing that her solo visit would magically fix their relationship. Their dad was a certified genius, a brilliant lawyer, and a complete booger. He didn't know how to relate to the 'little people', like Mandy, who couldn't match his intellect or gain him some advantage.

"They're good." She said cautiously. "How are things in the Great Eastern Megalopolis?"

"Real busy," her father said, still with that hard bounce that screamed _fake!fake!fake!_ He always used that tone with her, as if he couldn't figure out how to talk to someone ordinary. If she went to D.C. like she was supposed to, there'd be two full weeks of listening to that tone, of hearing it in her own voice, of counting the days-hours-minutes until she could get back on the plane and come home.

To Hell with this (she heard Kaylee Frye say in _Serenity_ ), I'm gonna live!

"Am I still coming out there?" she asked baldly. Taking charge like Mary and being brave like Claire thought she was.

"Well, that's the thing," he said, confirming what she'd suspected.

She let the rest of his awkward explanations drone on in her ear as she tried to figure out how she felt about it, and whether it mattered

"Big case" blahblahblah. "Long hours" blahblahblah. Excuses, excuses.

"I'd like a car," she broke into the flow.

He stopped. "What?"

"If you give me a decent car, you won't have to feel guilty about not wanting to see me."

He sputtered something along the lines of, "Of course I want to see you," but even the spotty nature of cell phone sound quality couldn't hide the fact that he was lying.

"It's okay, really," she reassured him. "We'd have nothing to talk about. I've seen all the monuments —twice—so we'd either kill each other or go postal on the Beltway. I figure you give me a car and that'll spare you the scandalous trial."

Silence on the other end so Mandy rushed on. "It doesn't have to be anything fancy. A Ford Focus would work. Y'know, something small and cheap to run."

Her heart was pounding, but not as badly as when she'd faced down Jeff Johansen. Maybe that saying about practice making perfect was true. Not that she was perfect at this assertiveness stuff, but it was getting a little easier.

Dad sputtered a little, protested a little, and negotiated a lot. They finally agreed that he'd send her five thousand dollars that she could spend anyway she wanted, since that was about how much he usually spent when she and Claire visited. (Yay! Disneyland Dads for the (financial) win.)

Oddly, it was the best they'd ever gotten along, and when he said good-bye his voice was actually warm and a little affectionate. If she'd known all she had to do to earn his respect was to be a greedy little hard-ass, she would've done it years ago. She could've maybe gotten a trip to Greece out of it.

"What are you smiling about?" Claire asked, coming in from the front and heading toward the fridge.

"Dad's going to send me money instead of me going out to visit."

Claire straightened and stared at her. "Seriously?"

Mandy's grin widened. She nodded. "Five thousand bucks."

"Five thousand?" Claire echoed in shock.

"It was either that or a car." Mandy wasn't worried about him welshing. He might have been incapable of keeping it in his pants (according to Mom), but he'd never been cheap. It was one of the reasons Mom had been able to buy the motel. (It was also probably the only reason they'd been able to keep up on the repairs.)

"Way to go, Mandy." Claire cheered. "I didn't think you'd actually go through with it."

"I nearly didn't," she replied. "But… I dunno. Life's too short to put either of us through that." She thought of Mary, going on and on and on about how John was in California and she wasn't. "I don't want to turn into someone who whines about the things in life they can change or the things they can't. Either change them or learn to accept, right?"

Claire was still smiling at her, a soft smile that sparkled. "I'm proud of you," she said simply. Then she leaned over and gave Mandy a quick kiss on the cheek. She walked over to the door that divided their living area from the front desk. Then she turned. "So you _are_ going to buy a car right? So you can come visit me in Boston?"

Claire would be in college, busy and grown-up. Why would she want her baby sister hanging about?

Because she was Claire, Mandy answered herself. "That's the plan."

A final blinding smile and Claire was out the door and hidden from view.

Mandy kept smiling for a long time.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary:_

_It's been confirmed. John will be mustered out in April._

_I can't… I don't know how to feel! I'm happy and nervous and excited and scared._

_I graduate this year, and once I have we're going to get married and go. We'll leave together and start a new life away from hunting, family pressures, and all of it. We'll start fresh, just him and me._

_He's promised me._

_Mom understands, but Dad will be upset (mild understatement). I don't care. I want John and John wants me. That's all that matters._

…

Mandy resisted the temptation to flip ahead in the final volume. The last entry would probably tell her if Mary got her apple-pie life, but so few people did.

It would be frigging ironic (and not in a cool way) if John made it through the Marines and Vietnam only to be killed the first week at home.

...

_Dear Diary,_

_I went to see Mr. Winchester today. I wasn't sure if John had told him he wasn't signing up for a second tour. (He had.) We sat on the porch and talked. He knows what John and I have planned: leaving and maybe getting married. It made him sad but he said he understood._

_I haven't told my parents yet. I don't know how. I just know I have to be with John no matter what._

* * *

  
There were hearts of all shapes and sizes floating around the third entry in April 1973. Some had arrows through them and little cupids floating around with their bows. It was cute. Weird, but cute.

Mandy had no trouble interpreting the change in mood: John was coming home.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_I waited at the bus for John. I got there far too early – nearly two hours early! Didn't matter; the time flew._

_Mr. Winchester arrived much closer to the posted arrival time, probably because he had to take time off work._

_When John arrived, I nearly didn't recognize him. He seemed so much taller than I remembered, and his shoulders… I don't remember them being so broad. Of course he had on his uniform and, as much as I was against him joining up, it did make him look very smart!_

_I wanted to kiss him. I probably would have if Mr. Winchester hadn't been there._

_Mr. Winchester didn't stick around, which surprised both of us. Instead he took John's bags and told us to "Talk! Figure things out." He said he'd have supper waiting for whenever John got home. He's a very sweet man._

_So we walked home together, through Lawrence, holding hands and stopping whenever we felt like it. We did manage a couple kisses. They were better than I remembered–_

…

High angst had been replaced by sugar overload. Next Mary would be saying she heard a heavenly choir singing.

Mandy rolled over on her bed and grabbed the chips.

Maybe they'd have welcome-home sex, which would be weird to read because it wouldn't be made-up people getting sweaty but actual people she kind of knew. Plus Mary's dad would have a major freak-out and he owned guns!

Shit. That was a real possibility, wasn't it? Mr. Campbell could really kill John if he caught them doing something. It wasn't like the Free Love thing had ever caught on in the Midwest.

Mandy swallowed slowly, the salty, greasy mass going down hard, and fought the urge to go to the end of the book. Then she wiped her fingers on her pants and turned just one page.

…

_–We talked about our future together, in more detail than we could by mail where either my dad or the army could intercept and read our letters to each other. We decided the first thing to do is buy a car. We'll buy something we can sleep in, like a VW bus, so we can cut costs. After that we can decide what we're going to do and where we're going to go. I've got offers of scholarships to a couple colleges, and John can use his veteran's benefits to get training just about anywhere._

_It'll work. We'll make it work, and then we'll be so happy!_

_He's going to buy the van tomorrow first thing, he said. Then, once that's paid for, we'll get together and talk_

_His goodnight kiss in front of my house was much too short. I think Dad was standing in the living room, staring out the window and waiting for us to arrive. He came out and coughed!_

_I told Dad that it wasn't the fifties anymore. He didn't need to stand guard over my virtue with a shotgun._

_He said he knew he didn't. Then he said he'd trained me well enough I should be able to do it myself. It was almost a compliment._

_I think I'm almost going to miss him when I'm gone._

…

The phone rang and jerked Mandy out of the story.

"Son of a bitch," she yelped; her heart raced.

It was room 9B, the couple driving from Minneapolis to Tennessee for her parents' 40th wedding anniversary. It was the fourth time they'd phoned: more towels, where's the ice, the AC doesn't work, blahblahblah… Unhappy people and nothing Mandy could do would change that. No matter how many towels she gave them.

"Front desk."

"This is room 9A," the woman announced, as if the room number didn't come up on the telephone. "The stove isn't working."

"Did you flip the master switch on the wall beside the sink?" You know, Mandy thought, the one that said 'Range Master Switch'.

There was silence on the other end.

"It doesn't work automatically?"

"No, ma'am. When the motel was built the stoves were gas. The master switch controlled the gas going to the range. It also activated the pilot light."

"But these are electric ranges," she pointed out.

"Yes, ma'am," Mandy repeated, knowing the twenty-something female would hate being called 'ma'am'. "But a lot of our guests, especially those with small children, appreciated not having to worry about their kids accidentally turning on the stove and hurting themselves, so we decided to keep the master switch."

More silence then a patronizing, "How… _quaint_."

Mandy ground her teeth a little. "A piece of Americana," she said cheerily, just to be annoying.

She heard the husband in the background say that it was working now, so she wasn't surprised when the woman hung up without a word. She put the handset back in the cradle and unclenched her jaw. Sure they weren't happy with each other, but they were taking it out on the world around them. Mandy didn't think they'd hit their 10th wedding anniversary let alone their 40th because every time she'd shown up at their door, they'd been arguing and sniping at each other and they hadn't stopped.

Mandy was just glad there didn't seem to be any kids to see their parents acting like spoiled children.

Was it better or worse to be a kid in a happy homo marriage (and Claire would so kick her ass if she heard Mandy call it that!) or to live in a traditional family where the parents couldn't stand each other?

Mandy was inclined to the 'better happy than hetero' side of the argument but everyone was different, she supposed.

She and Claire had done okay emotionally when Mom and Dad split, but Claire thought it was because Dad hadn't really been big in their lives even when they _had_ shared a home. He'd had no interest in them as toddlers, and barely any when they'd been children, plus he'd worked killer hours at his firm so they'd often gone days without seeing him. (The 'bits on the side' hadn't helped the home-away ratio either.)

It also occurred to Mandy that people (mostly women, she thought, though she hated to stereotype her gender) who spent so much time thinking about and planning their wedding (often before they had an actual fiancé) were setting themselves up for disappointment. Anything that anticipated couldn't live up to the hype, whether it was Christmas (Mandy knew from experience) or a trip to Disneyworld (which had been _awesome!_ ). Besides, the wedding was _one day_. A marriage was a lot more than that. A ten-year marriage meant being with that person for about 3,650 days. Plenty of time to be disappointed that life together wasn't always a honeymoon.

Mary was pinning an awful lot onto this wedding, and that would put a lot of pressure on John to be this magical perfect partner, and nobody was perfect. Didn't she remember how much she hadn't liked him when they first met?

She snorted. Obviously not. Still, it was sweet how gone they were for each other. She hoped they had made it work.

She wasn't taking bets on it.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary,_

_Two things of note:_

_John didn't buy a van or anything practical. He bought a stupid muscle car. He promised! _

_Of course, my dad approved of it because "in an emergency you can hide a body in the trunk". (John thought he was joking!) Dad still hassled John about everything else but it all comes down to the fact that John's not a "Hunter". I'm supposed to carry on the family tradition, but I can't imagine anything worse than to raise my children in this life the way I was._

_I don't care what it takes I won't let it happen!_

_The second thing that happened was we were followed by a hunter. I caught him outside the diner where John and I were talking about what we're going to do next._

_A hunter!_

_He said his name was Dean van Halen–_

…

_Van Halen_? Seriously?

Well, Mandy reminded herself. It had to have existed as a name before the band, but it still seemed strange to have it turn up in Mary's diary in 1973.

…

_–and he's a little older than me (and kind of cute) but I've never heard of him before and I bet Dad hasn't either. Of course, I had to take him home so that Mom and Dad could check him out. Although, I have to admit, I was half afraid Dad would just shoot him and ask questions after. He still nearly kicked Dean out, even though he passed Dad's test, but Mom invited him for supper. From the talk, it seems like he and Dad are working the same case._

_I don't know how a hunter from out of town heard about what happened to Mr. Whitshire, so maybe Dad's right to be suspicious, but I don't know. There's something about him..._

_I don't even know what it is, but I trust him._

…

_Dear Diary,_

_Dean was at the Whitshire farm when we showed up. (He was even wearing a priest's outfit, just like Dad.) I didn't go into the house, but stayed outside to talk to the son, Charlie. We talked for a bit, and he admitted that his father was free with his fists, mostly when he'd been drinking, but mostly just because. His mother, Charlie's mother – Beth, that is – was his favorite target but he sometimes went after Charlie and his sisters too._

_Then Charlie said that a stranger, a man, had asked him if he wanted the beatings to stop. Charlie said "Yes, of course." (Who wouldn't?)_

_We asked what the man had wanted in return, and Charlie said (as best I remember) he, the guy, would "come calling ten years from now. Maybe he'd want something then."_

_Dean thinks he sold his soul to a demon. I don't know enough about demons – they're pretty rare – but I'll ask Dad about it later._

_We asked Charlie to describe the guy even though, if it really_ was _a demon, then it could have easily jumped bodies by now. Still it would give us a place to start. Charlie said it was a white guy of average height and average looks, but then Charlie added that his eyes had seemed yellow. Just briefly, but definitely yellow, and Dean recognized it. He didn't say anything, but I know he did, and it scared him._

_Dean van Halen isn't here hunting just any demon. He's here hunting_ THIS _demon._

_In the truck, I told Dad that Dean recognized the demon. Now they're downstairs fighting about it (I can hear them from up here). I can figure out some of it, of course. I'm not stupid! I know that d_ _emons usually show up, possess some poor soul, then cause misery, mayhem and death in that person's family and home, so it makes them easy to track._

_This demon, this yellow-eyed demon, isn't doing that. It seems to be quietly going around making deals where the payment won't be due for another ten years. It's planning—long term planning—and that makes it much more dangerous than any run-of-the-mill demon that my parents have ever encountered (that I know of, anyway). It means that there's some threat neither Dean nor Dad are telling me about._

_It's so typical. Dad wants me to be a hunter, but then he doesn't tell me the important information because he wants to "protect" me. Ignorance is deadly in a supernatural fight, that's what he's always told me_

_I cannot wait to get out of this life._

_I won't leave now. I can't do that to Mom and Dad, not when it's a demon they're facing, but just as soon as we've exorcised it… Then I'm talking John into going far, far away, somewhere we'll be safe._

…

Mandy was getting a horrible sense of foreboding.

This Dean guy showed up, out of nowhere, and knew exactly what they were up against? Dean _Van Halen?_ Yeah right! He was probably in on it somehow and that meant Mary and her family were up against something really, really big. Mandy had seen _The Exorcist_ (I and II; she hadn't bothered with III) and she knew that exorcising demons wasn't easy or quick. It was dangerous. It could _kill_ them.

Then she remembered that those were movies and demons weren't real. Probably.

Holy crap, she was starting to believe this stuff.

She dropped her head onto the counter. This wasn't just a casual 'it could be true' kind of belief, it was a 'grab the salt and holy water just in case' thing.

After three years' worth of diaries, Mary hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid: Mandy had.

Still, psychosis wasn't going to keep her from finishing them. Not when they were starting to get good again.

* * *

  
 _Dear Diary,_

_I know I already made an entry today, but this was strange enough that it needs to be put down._

_Dean van Halen is heading out of town for a while. I don't know why, but before he left, he came up to my room to say good-bye. That would've been okay—I wouldn't normally make an entry about it—but some of the things he said, and the way he said them, were odd._

_He told me he thought John was a good guy, and that John and I were meant to be together; that he – Dean – was counting on us getting together. I don't…I don't understand. It's weird. Why would it make a difference to him?_

_I probably would've shrugged it off except that wasn't the strangest thing he said. He told me, made me promise, that I wouldn't get out of bed no matter what I heard, on November 2, 1983 – in ten years!_

_He didn't explain why. He was practically crying when he said it!_

_I promised. Of course I promised. Now I just have to figure out what I promised._

…

Oh man! The diary finished in 1973! Mandy was never going to know what was so important about a day in November ten years down the line. She hadn't had much luck researching Mary and John before… Damn it!

And she was going to have to rethink this Dean's guy's role in this. He wasn't some kind of undercover bad guy; he was more like Arnold Schwarzeneggar in _T2_.

Hoo-boy! This was getting exciting.

…

_Dear Diary,_

_My third entry of the day, but this one is straight-up bad news._

_John's father had a stroke. A mild one apparently, but the doctors told John that there could still be some damage to the right side and it could affect his father's mobility. They're going to keep him in hospital for a while but they're already talking about him needing semi-permanent help._

_We're going to meet tomorrow, after he's talked to the doctors some more, then we'll make new plans because John will never leave his father, not like this._

…

Mandy looked up when the bell rang and couldn't stop the scowl. "Jenny Connors." It was only half acknowledgment. The other half was threat.

"Mandy. Is your, um. Is your sister here?" Jenny asked slowly.

"Why would I tell you?"

Jenny drew her shoulders up defensively, like she felt guilty.

And so she should, Mandy thought angrily. "How's the _boy_ friend?" Mandy asked just to dig it in. "Still rich?"

Then a familiar hand fell on her shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "It's okay, Mandy." A pause and Mandy could feel her sister draw in a bracing breath. "Hello, Jenny. It's been a while."

Six months and eighteen days.

Six months and eighteen days since Jenny Connors had backed out of going to the prom with Claire because she was going to go steady with Tom Yiskew instead.

Six months and eighteen days since Mandy had rocked Claire gently and wiped her face with a cool cloth as she fell apart.

Six months and eighteen days since she'd learned that her big sister wasn't invincible.

Her scowl deepened.

"Can we speak for a bit?" Jenny made a vague gesture at the parking lot.

"I'm leaving for college in three weeks," Claire said in a level tone.

"I know, I know. It's just…" Jenny rushed in before stopping and chewing on her lips. (Big, fat lips. Like Angelina Jolie's but not as sexy.) She flicked a glance at Mandy. "Can we… Can we talk outside?" Again she waved at the parking lot.

She was going to try and talk Claire into something, Mandy realized, something that would sound reasonable and like the nice thing to do, but would hurt Claire like hell. She reached up and grasped her sister's hand where it trembled on her shoulder.

"She won't be your bit on the side and she deserves better than to be your Dirty Little Secret." It was out of Mandy's mouth before she'd known she wanted to say it.

"This has nothing to do with you!" Jenny's nervousness was gone, replaced by anger (which might have been fueled by guilt but Mandy didn't care. Claire had said she was fierce and brave, so she wasn't going to back down.)

"She's my sister. I love her and want her to be happy. Of course I'm involved." She tried to make her voice sound like that FBI guy's: no bullshit and no prisoners.

Jenny looked like she was gearing up for another volley and Mandy braced herself, trying desperately to remember all the things she'd wanted to say to Jenny for the last six months and eighteen days.

Then Claire chuckled. It was soft and short, but genuine. "It's okay, Mandy-Bear," she said, patting Mandy's shoulder. "It'll be okay."

With a final squeeze, Claire moved from behind the counter to the door. She pushed it open and waved Jenny through. Then she gave Mandy a small smile and stepped out and joined her ex on the pavement.

Mandy scowled harder, and watched carefully in case her big sister needed her.

It was a very long talk.

* * *

  
 _Dear diary,_  
 _Quick note: the Demon, the yellow-eyd demon Dean's hunting, is at Liddys house. I don't know whatit wants but we hav to stop It.!  
         _ _I wish you could wish us luck._

…

Mandy had to read that entry a few times before she got it all. Mary's usually tidy writing had been scrawly and awful. No wonder though. If Mary thought her best friend since ninth grade was in danger from a Big Bad…

It wasn't like Mary had many friends.

…

_Diary,_

_I can't…_

_It killed John._

_John, Mom and Dad. Dean van Halen's disappeared, so he might be dead as well._

_It was at Liddy's house, just like Dean said. We fought it and it... It noticed me. I don't know why. I would change it if I could, but I can't, so they're dead. They're dead because of me._

_It killed them because it wanted me._

_It offered me a deal. Like it did Charlie Whitshire. It would bring John back to life – but only John – if I would allow it to… to access our house in ten years._

_Ten years. May 1983._

_I said yes. I had to say yes. So much can happen in ten years._

_I said yes and I have no idea to what._

…

Oh, wow…

Mandy sat on her bed, stunned.

She needed to know what had happened ten years later. It had to be something nasty because that's what demons were all about right? She'd get on the computer tomorrow, do some research. There had to be something. Maybe she'd made her search criteria too narrow. Maybe she should look up specific newspapers, see if their online archives went back that far. They should, shouldn't they? After all, 1983 wasn't 1970…

She slept badly, dreaming of fire and being chased by Boolean search symbols. In the end, she beat her mom out of bed for once. Claire had taken semi-permanent possession of the laptop while she prepped for college, and the big desktop was locked in Mom's office to protect against casual browsing through sensitive files, so Mandy was forced to use the one at the desk. She didn't bother turning the light on because the sun was rising (or thinking about it) and the office wasn't supposed to be open yet anyway.

She typed in "John OR Mary Winchester Lawrence Kansas AND May 1983".

The results weren't too bad; forty-eight thousand or so, and some were obviously not what she was looking for (a listing of the members of the Order of the Garter, anyone?). She skipped to the next page, and the next, until a listing from one of Lawrence's newspapers popped out at her. She clicked, and clicked again, looking around until she found the entry on May 14th:

Mary and John Winchester of Lawrence, Kansas  
Proudly welcome Samuel Matthew  
Born May 2, 1983 at 4:04 AM  
8lbs 6oz – 16 inches  
He joins his brother Dean  
in being the light of his parents' lives.

There was a photo included with the notice. An attractive blonde female who looked a little tired but very happy, and a dark-haired man with soft eyes and deep dimples who was oh-so familiar.

It was Elroy McGillicuddy.

She didn't look any further.

  


* * *

  
_Dear Doug;_

_I know that's not your name because I read the diaries. They're your mother's, right? She was Mary Campbell and your father is John Winchester, so that would make you either Dean or Sam Winchester – much better than "Doug McGillicuddy", BTW)._

_I know reading them was rude and intrusive, but when I started, I didn't think anyone was coming to get them or would want them back, and it gets boring at the desk, you know? By the time you called me, I'd read far enough that I had to find out if Mary and John got together. I wanted to know how the story ended, but I guess it hasn't really. Ended, I mean, because it wasn't a story, it was real life – your life – and I had no business sticking my nose into it._

_Anyway, I just wanted to say that your mom sounds like a fantastic person. I wish I could know her for real. The way she grew up was… well, 'weird' doesn't begin to cover it, but she was confident, and it sounds like she stayed strong and stuck to her vision of what she wanted her life to be. Thinking about her and how she handled things in her life helped me handle some stuff in mine_ _, so_

_I hope her life turned out to be what she wanted to be, and that you and your dad and your brother were just up here on a fishing trip and not because something awful happened. I say that because the FBI came by after you left. I wasn't going to tell you but you have the right to know. They took the clippings and notes from the room (that's why they're not included with the diaries). I don't know why they're following you, but whatever they think you did, I think they're probably wrong._

_~~If you ever make it back to Salvation~~ _

_I wish you and your family a lot of luck in whatever the future brings to you._

_Sincerely,_

  


_Amanda Afigitis_

**Author's Note:**

> I love betas. They make me sound so much better than I do on my own. This time round, I had three betas. Since this story had nothing in it my mother couldn’t read, that’s exactly what she did. Then my RL friend, Alecto Nyx, covered it in red ink and sticky posts, and finally, rince1wind*dissected it and helped me put it back together again in much better shape.
> 
> Thank you both. You really did help it become a much better story.
> 
> Soundtrack is available for download here: http://www.mediafire.com/?g1wiucu37f4lche
> 
> Research and Thinky Thoughts:
> 
> I used a website called American Monsters to find a summer hunt for the Campbells. Cooginators (yes they do actually exist for varying degrees of 'actual') were perfect. Barely dangerous and kinda-sorta cute, they allowed Mary's growing dissatisfaction with hunting to blossom.
> 
> During the events that shaped Mary and John's lives, I was a tiny kid in a small town. Most of the 'big stuff' of the 60's/early-70's passed me by, so I toured the ever-present Wikipedia for general background of the era,
> 
> I also did a quick whip through the Lawrence Public School website to confirm the school names and grades. It's just as well I did as their set-up is completely different to mine up here in the Great White North.
> 
> Thanks to the Supernatural wiki, of course, because if I'd had to watch the episodes to confirm the details I would've ended up doing more watching and less writing. However, following this comment in the entry for John on the SuperWiki:
> 
>  
> 
> _It's unlikely John graduated from high school. The badges/medals/photos in his journal […] suggest he was a rifleman. High school graduates were almost always sent to aviation or communication schools, rather than combat arms._
> 
>  
> 
> I ended up doing more research because this can't be a high school romance if one of them isn't in high school, right?
> 
> Sure enough, if the headstone in _What Is and What Should Never Be_ is true, then John would have turned 17 in April 1971. This is the earliest he could have joined the Marines. Given the timing of In the Beginning (April 1973), and the knowledge that he'd just returned from Vietnam, he would've had to have left school in 1971 in order to have served 2-years. Therefore, John didn't finish high school.
> 
> So if they can't be together in Lawrence, was there anything in the history of his unit that I could use in my story? Obviously more research was required.
> 
> In Folsom Prison Blues Dean states that John served in the "Echo 2/1" company. I checked the history of the 2nd Battalion 1st Marines ("Echo 2/1") on various sites but I mostly relied on the official Marine website. It confirmed that if John was indeed part of that unit he would have spent very little time in-country. 
> 
> In April 1971 the battalion was sent to Da Nang to join the 3rd Marine Amphibious Brigade (IIIMAB). It was there for three months, until June 1971, and then it was sent to the newly established Camp Pendleton in California, so John would have spent the majority of his military life on a safe, State-side base and not in the dank, dangerous jungles of Vietnam.
> 
> Bummer.
> 
> However, as a theory, it could explain why John was so big on instant obedience rather than independent thinking.
> 
> Under fire (noisy, confusing, scary as hell, fire) communications are often lost or garbled and plans are ruined before they ever get started. The ability to come up with (workable) tactics and strategies while under that kind of pressure is something that would (normally) be applauded. John wouldn't have learned that since he was unlikely to have seen actual combat. Instead, his experience as a Marine would have been drills, training, practice and more drills. Obedience and respect for authority would have been embedded in his psyche as a major part of what it meant to be a Marine-Soldier-Hunter, and it would explain why he emphasized this aspect when training his sons, and (partially) why he had such a hard time giving control over to anyone else.
> 
> I got around this separation by making use of this passage from 5.14, _My Bloody Valentine_ :
> 
> DEAN: Why does heaven care if Harry meets Sally?  
> CUPID: Oh, mostly they don't. You know, certain bloodlines, certain destinies. Oh, like yours.  
> SAM: What?  
> CUPID: Yeah, the union of John and Mary Winchester? Very big deal upstairs; top priority arrangement. Mm-hmm.  
> DEAN: Are you saying that you fixed-up our parents?  
> CUPID: Well, not me, but... Yeah. Well, it wasn't easy, either. Ooh, they couldn't stand each other at first, but when we were done with them? Perfect couple.
> 
> So I just made the cupids work twice as hard to keep the 'attraction' alive between them.


End file.
